Blood and Connection
by mynewgenesis
Summary: A marriage of convenience, dark pasts, and research that could change the world. A Draco/Hermione story. Review!
1. A Wedding

**Chapter One Pt. One**

I had always imagined my wedding to be a lavish, decadent affair; swathes of white fabric and heaps of rose petals strewn artfully on all available surfaces. I would be wrapped in gauzy white layers of lace and satin and velvet. My dark hair would be coiffed perfectly and my cheeks would be as red and bloodstained as the roses I would carry. And there, at the altar, would stand my groom; perfect, hair as dark as night, and eyes focused solely on my descent with warmth and love.

Of course, truth rarely lends itself to the willful dreams of fiction. My true wedding held none of the splendour and majesty I was hoping for.

It was a quiet affair, only the closest family and friends were invited. In total the guests totalled twelve, plus the clergyman, a maid of honor, and a best man. Wizarding weddings don't require the father of the bride to walk her down the aisle, as I found out, and the family into which I was marrying were unwilling to make any concessions for my muggle upbringing. It was enough a sore spot as it was, I didn't press the issue.

We stood outside on the lawns of the extensive grounds, a flimsy looking tent set up for the small reception afterwards. As the clergyman spoke the words which would bind me indefinitely to the man holding my hands with his cold, calloused fingers, fat droplets of rain landed heavily on my face, my shoulders, in my hair. Drops ran gently and swiftly down my arms, over my collarbone and down the front of my dress. My skin errupted with goosebumps and tightened against the cold.

"Miss Hermione Granger, do you accept this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, in the eyes of both the creator and the eyes of your peers?"

I remained silent for a few seconds, enough for him to squeeze my hands in warning. Feeling tangibly the last shreds of my freedom drip from my body, I looked back at the clergyman. "I do."

A burning knot formed in the pit of my stomach, spreading along my veins like fire, molding to my bones, seeping into my muscle. Magic in its corporeal form, binding me to my words.

"And do you, Draco Malfoy, accept this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, in the eyes of both the creator and in the eyes of your peers?"

Without a shred of hesitation, he nodded firmly and said "I do."

"With the power vested in me by the Ministry of Magic, I pronounce you to be Mr. And Mrs. Malfoy, Lord and Lady of Malfoy Manor and Malfoy Park, husband and wife. Please seal your vows."

One of his hands left mine and found the curve of my jaw, tilting my head up to meet his cold lips as they pounced gently on my mouth. As soon as his lips made contact with my skin the burning which had shot through me seconds before and vanished came back, stronger and seeking, binding our magic, our souls into one, yet leaving them seperate. Leaving Draco of my own accord with the intention not to return would tear the binding in half and kill me, possibly him as well. Wizards had, for the past thousand years, had a divorce rate of zero per cent.

Something else attacked my core, digging and hacking and slicing me open, pouring magic and stirring my senses, burning me from the inside out. It lasted but a moment, as long as his lips were on mine, but at the end, when the burning was beginning to fade and the use of my limbs was returned to me, I sawthe face of a massive black cat flash across the backs of my eyelids, dark green eyes oddly alight in the darkness of my head, feral and piercing. Frightened, my eyes snapped open and I found the grey eyes of my husband staring back at me, serious and betraying nothing of his thoughts. After years of being able to read Harry and Ron so easily, his stony countenance was alarming; I didn't know how to proceed with him. He left me confused, unaware of where we stood with regards to our relationship, even after we had made the sacred vows to remain together, as close as it was possible for two people to be.

"Hermione," a voice said behind me, and I turned to see the cool eyes of Narcissa, so like the eyes of her son. Slanted and exotic, cold and forbidding. When she looked at me I felt ugly and plain. "Welcome," she said, taking my hand in hers and squeezing, her soft hands cold and thin. It was a very perfunctory gesture, probably only for the benefit of the guests who were watching with avid interest. I thanked her and muttered something about how honored I felt to be part of the Malfoy legacy. Her mouth tightened and her husband looked annoyed and agreived behind her.

Narcissa and Lucius did not understand why Draco would marry me; they didn't know what could possibly have attracted him to me. Sure, I was pretty enough, but I was not of their world, and for that alone, I could never be accepted. I would forever be something to be curiously examined, and then held at arms length. There would be no close family here, no warm family dinners and shared holidays.

But this was what I had chosen for myself.

***

**One year before**

_I was happy, for the first time in a long time, and peace had finally settled amongst the survivors of the Great War. Those who died were at rest, those who were injured were adjusting, and those who were healthy and well were learning how to live again without the oppressive cloak of Voldemort clinging to the air. _

_I was with my friends; we were walking through the halls and corridors of our old home, Hogwarts, remembering old times and old passed the second floor girls bathroom, and I suddenly remembered something I had hidden there years before, in my third year. I begged off for a moment and left them to wander the rest of the corridor themselves. I went to the fourth stall, the one Moaning Myrtle seemed to inhabit the most, and therefore the least used by human patrons. I lifted the lid to the toilet tank. There floated a shiny tin bowl, in which lay three vials, looking just as they had when I'd left them. The vials shone dark red, the light straining through the viscous liquid and reflecting coppery light into the sides of the bowl, distorted and eery._

_I held them up to the light to read the labels, faded with the humidity to nearly invisible script, but they were still there. Draco Malfoy, Dean Thomas, and Hermione Granger. A Pureblood, a Half-Blood, and a Mudblood. _

_I had stolen Draco's blood from the ground, after Buckbeak had slashed his arm. Dean Thomas had gotten a bloody nose after a fist fight with Seamus. I had punctured a hole in the crook of my elbow, where no one would notice a small wound. Blood from the three basic classifications of magical background, now the foremost priority in my research. I had been planning for years; ever since I learned first hand of the stereotypes and the hatred directed at people like me._

_Blood-, such a simple matter, and yet so hard to understand. Humankind had long been fascinated by it, attempting dangerous experiments and asking daunting questions. Why was it so important? What did it do? Why did it determine so many things about a person?_

_It decided who became king. Blood had the power to kill, and also to heal. Blood shed in sacrafice; blood shed in anger. Blood shed in self-hatred. Blood; everything and nothing. I would find out why._

_***_

It was impossible not to notice the coldness in the air, the barely concealed hatred and unsaid slurs. My parents were aware that the elder Malfoys held no fondness for them. My parents kept to themselves, congratulating me and expressing their hopes for my new life to be everything that is peaceful and wonderful. My father shook Draco's hand, and Draco, to his credit, did not look at all disgusted or ill as Lucius would have. I offered a small smile. He did not return it.

The rest of the reception offered more of the same. Ginny gave me a sympathetic smile, knowing how hard it was for me to keep my mouth shut and say the right things. She had displayed vast integrity by even showing up, hated and despised by the Malfoys as she was. Ron and Harry were conspicuously absent, having, for all intents and purposes, excommunicated me after they had found out my plans. They had only helped me strengthen my resolve. The rest of the guests milled awkwardly around, pretending a comfort they did not feel.

Finally, the hour struck midnight, the traditional hour in which the groom would carry his new bride to the bedchamber. Draco snagged my wrist, pecked me perfunctorily on the cheek, and made the appropriate closing comments. I was too nervous to speak. My mother must have caught my anxiousness because she grabbed my other wrist when I passed and gave a reassuring squeeze. My father blushed. When I walked past them it was the last time I would see them for months. They seemed to know it as I did. Their eyes glistened with sad tears, maybe some joy. I had long ago understood that the muggle world held no real place for me, and I had given up my sadness.

The walk to the bedchamber was long. Each step furthered my anxiety until I was almost hyperventilating and my breaths came in short, quick bursts and my hands shook with the increase in the level of blood flowing through the capilaries.

The path was long and winding, I nearly lost count of how many turns we had taken; I was sure that I would never find my way out of the room tomorrow -if indeed I was to be allowed to leave it. I was putting my very life in the hands of my new husband, and it was all I could do to trust that he would not abuse the power that was rightfully his, now by law. Somehow, though, I knew that he could not hurt me. He needed me, almost as much as I needed him.

The hallways were dark and dimly lit by torches flickering in gold- probably solid- holders spaced evenly down the walls. Heavy stone, ancient and clearly well used, a pathway worn into the ground, the stone lighter than along the sides. Generations of Malfoys had made this journey, a thousand new brides tracing this very route. My interest in the history very nearly made me forget my anxiety, but not quite. I couldn't stop my nervous quirks; my hands twisting in the fabric of my dress, my tongue darting out to wet my lips and bring moisture to my dry mouth.

Draco looked at me strangely, annoyed by my nervousness, but when we reached the door he stopped, and whirled me to face him. His hands weren't rough, but they held no gentleness. His cold skin pressed into my own, and I felt a strange, primal urge to duck and whirl away, to run. I forced myself to stand and meet his gaze.

"We cannot share the same bed tonight," he said finally, after staring intently for a moment. I didn't understand.

"But how-" I couldn't bring myself to say 'how will we consumate it'. But he caught my drift. Wizarding weddings, I had recently learned from an extremely disgusted Ron, had a time limit for consummation. If we didn't consumate within twenty four hours, the magic which held us bound would become magnified, drawing us together with magnetic force too strong to resist until we did. There were stories of couples who ended up succumbing in places not fit for such things, unable to resist the spell for any longer.

"I am an animagus. We can't- yet." he ammended.

I understood. In the vows, his magical forms had been transfered to me. Our patronus's would probably now be the same, taking whichever form was most dominant. And I was now, through him, an animagus. If we consumated before I changed for the first time, I would change half-way through due to extreme emotions, which would be problematic.

I nodded slowly. "How do I change?"

"I need to teach you, but not while there are guests still here." I forced myself not to ask why. He continued, dropping his hands to his side, brushing his palms against his robes, as if he were rubbing the feel of me from his skin. I tried not to be offended. "The first few times you will be overtaken by instinct," he said, "and you could become dangerous. I will have to go with you."

The great black cat flashed again against the backs of my eyes when I blinked, and I suddenly grasped the enormity of what I would be able to do; the kind of damage I could wreak.

"A panther." I said. He looked a tiny bit startled, but not entirely unsurprised. He nodded. "When can I try?" I felt young and stupid asking so many questions, when I was supposed to know everything. He had always been the first to comment on my inability to keep my mouth shut in school, mocking me with every opportunity. Being here put me on edge and I couldn't quite contain myself the way I had eventually learned after having had enough of his teasing. I had effectively reverted to my eleven year old self. Annoyance crept through my mind like a net, tainting my vision. My nervousness had fled, but anxiety stuck; I would be an untamed wild animal at some point in the evening, and I had had no time to prepare myself. If I hated anything, it was the unknown.

"This is your room," he said unnecessarily, motioning to the dark door with a lazy hand, "I'll come back for you at midnight."

"Do I need anything?" He shook his head and left me, his expensive dress robes a flurry around his ankles.

I grumbled under my breath and entered my room. I was unsurprised that I would not be sharing Draco's room; this was a marriage of convenience. I was no better than a guest in all but name.

The room was so lavish it could easily have housed the both of us, but I suspected that his was even better. No need to taint his things with mudblood stench more than was necessary, was probably what he had thought. As Lady of the Manor I was entitled to at least the second best room, and by the looks of it, the best had to be incredible.

My bed was massive. I could start at one end and roll over twenty times and still not reach the other side. If I lay with my head directly at the solid mahogany headboard, I would be able to fit another of me at my feet and still have room for extra footspace if needed. There was absolutely no need for so much room, and I couldnt understand why it was more impressive to have to climb twenty feet to get out of bed every morning than to roll gracefully out of a smaller one. It seemed like overkill to me, but what do I know? I'm just a poor, graceless commoner. Or I was.

There was a beautiful writing desk that I could appreciate in front of bay windows overlooking the small lake and the fountain, with a locking drawer for anything I wanted to keep personal. Several bookshelves lined the far wall and a positively enormous door led to an even more monstrous closet, filled to the brim with lavish dresses and robes that I would probably never have occasion to wear.

If I was going to be forced into the enemy camp, I decided critically as I surveyed the carefully put together room, I might as well enjoy it. Truly, it was much better than I had hoped for, and as I poked around, I knew that I could be at least content here. It was much more space than I needed, and I would be able to work in peace in such a secluded room. As far as I knew, the closest inhabited bedroom was miles away at the other end of the manor. I would be quite undisturbed.

I wandered into the closet and flicked a hand to turn the lights on. At the end was a wall sized mirror, broken into three so that I could, presumably, admire myself from every direction. As I neared it I realized that the two side mirrors had small handles on them.

I went first to the one on my left, pushed on the handle, and opened the mirror to a short set of stairs which descended to a bathroom the size of the girls dormitory in Hogwarts. There was a pool, a wall length mirror and a counter covered with every cosmetic potion known to wizardkind, and, I noted with dry humor, a great vat of Sleakeasy Hair Potion. Abruptly disinterested with the bathroom, I climbed the stairs back to the closet and opened the mirror to the other room.

The flight of stairs was longer, and led up instead of down, to a vast room with domed cielings and a ventilation system that made the room exactly the temperature of the outdoors. There were five long tables, each holding enough room for five cauldrons, and a storage room in the far wall, which even from the door, I could see was packed full of ingredients. I could have cried.

I knew then that I had done the right thing in marrying Draco Malfoy. I had not expected him to honor my conditions to such a degree, and I was astonished at his willingness to aid my research. But then, afterall, it affected him as much as me.

There was a clock on the far wall and it told me that Draco would be back for me in a few moments. I gave a final glance to the lab and went back to the main room, happier than I had been in months. I may have lost my freedom, but at the same time, I had gained the ability to win it back.

**.**

**.**

**Chapter One Pt. Two**

He came precisely at midnight, just as he had promised.

I wasn't sure how the mechanics of the change worked. I had researched the general effects and the spellwork involved, preparing for the eventuality that Harry, Ron, and I would become animagus's before the wars end, but the war ended before we had the chance. The spell didn't seem so very important afterwards, and it slipped my mind. But never having had the chance to research the intricasies of the spell, I wasn't sure what to do with my clothes. Did they change with me and become part of my external landscape when I changed? Or would the change rip the clothes into shreds and leave them littered on the ground, left for someone to find?

It would be a shame to ruin my dress, I thought ruefully. It was quite beautiful, in a simple, understated way. It had none of the over the top _haute couture _elegance that I had always imagined for myself, but the graceful lines draped from my form in a way that I could imagine I was a grecian princess. It had one shoulder with a golden circlet holding it into a narrow gathering and it widened over my collarbone and covered my chest with one piece of white fabric, clinging softly and sweeping under my arms to meet at the back, a golden staple holding it into place. Golden bands of ribbon wrapped around my waist, emphasizing the few curves that I had, highlighting without being vulgar, and then tied in a knot below the gathering of fabric at my back. Overall the effect was far more flattering than anything I had worn before, which was to be expected as it was picked out by Narcissa.

I supposed that if my change wrecked anything, it could be easily fixed. It was silly, but I had a vision of myself creeping silently through the grounds with bare feet and arms and my hair a mass of perfect curls around my shoulders, a wild beauty with grace and poise, stealth in every line. The moon would cloak my form with a subtle blue glow and I would be something out of a fairy tale. A priestess or a warrior.

"Hermione," a voice said from the doorway, sounding impatient. I looked up from my place on the bed, embarassed at my thoughts. I was not and never would be that sort of girl; the kind that easily inspired tales of excitement and intrigue and found mischief around every corner. I was the strong, dependable, bookish girl with aspirations only to be the smartest and the brightest. To imagine differently was to be foolish in every sort of way. Ginny was that girl, even Luna on occasion. I was not.

"Ready?" he asked me. I nodded, standing. He looked me up and down, his lip curling a tiny bit at my attire. He waved his wand and the dress disappeared, replaced by a skin tight pair of leggings and a black tee shirt. My daydream disappeared like a puff of smoke.

For a moment I thought his eyes darkened, maybe with lust, but his eyes quickly resumed their cold look of disinterest and he beckoned me with a hand to follow him. I did.

He led me to the lake, a small beach with coarse sand and sparse patches of grass.

"Changing requires concentration," he said, "You already saw the form?" I nodded. "Good, concentrate on that. It doesn't require a physical spell once you've already been made an animagus. Try to visualize the form, as much as you can. You have to push your bones to change with your mind. It might take a bit longer, but I'll change first so you know what to aim for."

I nodded again, nervous all over again, my palms getting sweaty at my sides. But I clenched my hands into fists, new determination setting in. If there was anything I was good at, it was tests.

He closed his eyes, squeezing them briefly and then relaxing again. His jaw muscles were taught, as, I noticed, were the rest of his muscles. His forearms were like tight wires, pulled straight. Then he started to change. It was almost too fast to see every detail. His forearms lengthened, his upper arms shortened, sinking into his shoulders, which were squishing together and moving sideways. His ribs reoriented, like a vise was on his middle and tightening, flattening him. His head became smaller and flatter, his nose and mouth shooting forwards into a snout, darkening as hair sprouted all over him. His thighs shortened, growing muscle and his shins all but disappeared, his feet lengthening into where they were.

Suddenly, withing a few seconds, I was facing an enormous, pure black cat with light grey eyes and long, razor sharp white teeth.

For a moment, I was gripped with fear. I forgot that this was Draco, a fully grown man, capable of self restraint. He knew me. But I didn't know him.

I backed up, faster than I should have and I fell to the ground. The cat, Draco, sat on its haunches, staring at me without moving. He bobbed his head down, urging me on. Some of the terror receded and I could appreciate the beauty of the creature in front of me. Moonlight glimmered on his shiny coat, highlighting the rippling muscle and the form that was created for speed and killing. In the back of my mind I heard a feral growl rip through me, a longing to become such a strong, fierce creature. Without closing my eyes, I tightened my muscles, looking Draco in the eye, visualizing every aspect of the form I suddenly wanted more than anything.

It was intoxicating, dizzying. The instincts I had inherited choked me, erasing inhibitions, fears, worries. Dull pain shot through me as my muscle creaked into new places, pulling bones and tendons along, reshaping me. My fingernails hardened into claws, and my teeth sliced through my lip as they lengthened and sharpened. My tounge grew sharp, tiny spikes made for rasping meat from bone. Smells became sharper, more intense. I could smell the sheep in a field a mile away. My ears grew large, flat, with tiny hairs that caught the faintest vibrations from all around me, the tiniest rustle in the grass, the ripple in the lake from a fish that jumped on the other end. The raucous cocophony that was the splashes from the fountain. The dark night atmosphere was suddenly illuminated, my perfect vision no longer relying on the sun and seeing perfectly in the subtle moonlight. I could see every hair on Draco's face, every blade of grass and every crawling insect from where I sat to the treeline twenty meters away.

Without even realizing, my form was completely changed. I could feel the incredible strength in my body, able to propel me twenty feet in a single push, able to climb a tree in four seconds. I could do anything. If I wanted, I could fly.

My instincts tried to push away my rational thought, but I struggled to retain control. I was not like Harry; I would never be able to overthrow an imperius curse, or resist a skilled legilimens. But I could resist invasions of my own making. I repeated my name in my head over and over, concentrating on keeping myself sane. If anything, the fear of accidentally killing someone kept my thoughts in a straight line. In about five minutes of intense concentration, the instincts which had tried to make me flee into the cover of the forest receded to a manageable level, and I could reasonably explore without losing control. I padded over to the waterline, pleased to discover that walking with four legs came as naturally to me as two, and my tail created a sense of balance that I had lacked in my human form. For a girl who had never held much grace, I was now as graceful and lethal as they came. I could fall from a tree and land on my feet. I could leap from one tree to another and my feet would automatically find support even from a thin branch.

I saw myself in the water.

I had never had much to be vain about. I had never had the stunning beauty which Ginny had; tall, poised, lithe and exotic. My claim to recognition was my intelligence. No one stopped in the hall and whispered about me behind their hands at the ministry like they did for Ginny. She could stop traffic.

I wasn't jealous. Truly if I had been beautiful I wouldn't have known how to handle it. I am comfortable with being unnoticed. I am comfortable with my quiet reserve. I don't have the spark that allows beautiful people to subtly exert their influence. My cases always had to be won with hard, blank logic.

But as I looked at myself in the water, the sheer, agonizing beauty in this other form, suddenly I knew how it was. I was sleek, muscled, graceful. I noted with odd pride that I had kept my dark brown eyes.

I turned to Draco. Like so many other things that day, it was all thanks to Draco.

I inclined my great head and he padded over to me. He was bigger than I was, although not my much, his tail extending a little bit past mine, and his shoulders broader and more sheerly muscled. He brushed past me, dragging his hind leg in the sand. For a moment I thought he was hurt, but then I realized he was making a line in the sand directly in front of me. He stepped onto the side of it with me, and faced the field in front of us. He put his foreleg out and scratched something into the sand. It was a tree. He pointed to the field. In the center of the massive field that made up the grounds, there was a great oak tree. He tapped the top of the tree again in the sand, and then crouched into a tensely coiled position, his muscles taut under his coat. Suddenly I realized what he was doing.

He was going to race me.

I sat back on my haunches and flicked my tail over my back. Well then, I thought.

As you wish.

In one swift movement, I leapt over the line and started to run.

.

.

A/N: Review! Don't know how long it will be, but its my first ever Draco/Hermione story, so I'm pretty excited. :)


	2. Race

**Blood and Connection**

**Chapter Two**

Racing in this new, exhileratingly powerful form was like nothing I ever could have imagined.

When I was a little girl, I used to race through the playground fields near my house purely for the joy of the wind in my face and the feel of my heart pumping blood at a furious pace through my body, the feel of my arms and legs pulled free from the constraints of gravity, slicing through the air as my feet dug into the ground and propelled me forward. I always felt like I could fly, like a bird of prey soaring high in the sky. I was too afraid of heights to fly for real, but racing along on the ground, with my own legs pushing me as fast as I could go, I felt that flight was unnecessary.

But this – this was something different entirely. Everything now became easier, more natural, more infused with an inherent grace and ease. Clearly, in this new form I was _born_ to run, to race. My legs fought with the turf, slashing with sharp claws through the roots of the grass and ripping me forward at a speed which was almost frightening. Each bound launched me twentyfeet forward and while I was mid stride and all four legs were off the air they would rearange themselves almost of their own accord so that my spine elongated and contracted like a ribbon.

Draco was just as fast as me, perhaps just a tiny bit faster; it was hard to imagine that anything could be faster than I in those few moments. But in the haze of giddy emotions produced from the sheer freedom of flying along the wide, flat lawn, I almost forgot that we were racing to begin with; I almost didn't even care any longer who won and who lost, but then I remembered my opponent.

Draco Malfoy; Pureblood, aristocrat, snob, bully. Everything that I was not – or at least, I hadn't been before I'd married him that night, signing into the stereotypes like they were nothing more than small print at the bottom of the marriage certificates.

But still, to beat him on his own wedding night at his own game would give me a great feeling of poetic justice; I couldn't just let him pass me. I lengthened my stride, overjoyed to find that I was not yet in my top gear. My tail spun out behind me, balancing me and flicking of its own accord with joy.

I was at his shoulder – his cheek – his nose – an inch or two ahead of him. My heart was pounding in my chest, in a location I was consciously unused to, but it still felt right to me.

Just as we pulled to the tree, he put out an extra burst, and was just about to reach it before I did, but in desperation – by this point I was quite determined to win – I leapt from the ground clear into the air, my forelegs wide and welcoming the trunk of the tree like it was a long lost brother. My claws slid into the trunk like it was made of tissue paper rather than hardened bark, and I hauled myself up with the added impulsion from my speed and stopped, finally, on a branch about a quarter of the way up to the canopy.

Had I been in my human form at that point, my skin would have been flushed with exertion and my cheeks and eyes brightened with excitement. As it was, I panted, lying full length on the branch, my tail wrapped around it keeping me balanced. The cool air tasted good on my tongue and I was aware of the tiny spikes embedded in the pink flesh erect and ready to rasp meat from bone.

Below me, Draco growled from deep in his throat for me to come down, before he changed back into a man and used words.

"Grange – Hermione," he corrected himself, "Come down."

I looked at him mournfully. I did not want to go back to being human. I wanted to stay like this; in the form of this magnificent creature, not willing just yet to return to my boring, plain self.

Nevertheless, the day had been long and through the shroud of exhertions consequences I could feel the cool ache of my tiredness flowing through my bones. I was close enough to the ground that I wanted to try jumping, instead of crawling down slowly, however, as a last bit of exploration before the night ended.

I gathered my four paws under me, my tail drooping below me and holding me still, pulling my shoulderblades high together around my neck. I tightened my muscles, pushed with my hind legs, and soared through the air in a graceful arc to land fifteen feet from the base of the tree on all four feet, the springy muscles in my legs absorbing the shock and my tail arched high over my back. Proud of myself, I turned and trotted over to Draco, dropping to my haunches in front of him. He looked inscrutible, as ever.

I looked at him expectantly. I assumed that he wished for me to change back, but changing _into _this had been easy, almost reflexive when faced with his own form. Coming out of this was, I suspected, going to be more difficult.

"You have only to concentrate," he said after a few moments of my staring intently at him, "Visualize yourself and push your muscles back into it. Your magic will do the rest."

Obediently, if somewhat confusedly, I closed my eyes and tried to remember what I looked like. Average height, rather more tall than short, slim but not spectacularily thin, pale, obviously bookish. My face was oval and too wide to be very pretty, my eyes plain brown and the same color as my hair, which was, as my classmates had been so kind as to point out in school every now and then, outrageously curly and often quite bushy, perpetually frizzled from the constant humidity from my potions.

I'd barely felt more than a tingle in my spine and then I was sitting on the ground in roughly the same position I'd been in as a panther, looking silly on hands and knees and my mouth open to catch more air. I stood quickly, unable to speak much. This was no hardship to Draco, however, who did not seem particularily keen on speaking to me either. It was a wonder to me that, with so little conversation between the two of us, we had ever managed to figure out that we should get married.

"Wow," I said a while later, on the way back to the manor, which was roughly a kilometer away. A giddy little bubble of laughter gurgled in my throat and I pronounced, with great energy, "I won."

His eyes narrowed.

"You did not," he said shortly.

"I did too," I protested, a happy smile plastered on my face, "I touched the tree first."

He shook his head emphatically. "No, you leapt _into_ the tree. That counts as cheating."

This was dumbfounding, especially as we had formed the rules of the race with no words and rough paw motions with a scribbled pictograph in the sand. I looked at him with a facial expression that clearly said, if he'd bothered to read it, 'you are an idiot'.

"You're just upset because you lost," I said childishly. I remembered having a fight along the same lines with Ron in second year.

We walked in silence for a few more minutes before he broke it, half concedingly, saying "No, at best it was a tie. I won." He pointed at himself. "Me," he said, as if I hadn't understood him the first time. He cleared his throat as I ignored him and continued marching across the lawn.

"However," he started again, "I am prepared to admit that, as a newcomer, you did – you – you did very well." His voice sounded slightly off, like he himself was as surprised as I was that he had paid me a compliment, even if it had been begrudgingly given.

I stared at him hard before shaking my head, unprepared to lose the argument, no matter how childish it was. Honestly, how hard was it to admit that I'd won? So what if it was a fluke; the fact was I'd beaten him to the tree. "Nope," I said mulishly. "Malfoy – er, Draco, - you're just a poor loser."

I wondered briefly if if he understood that I wasn't seriously trying to have a massive argument with him - he wasn't like Ron and Harry and I wasn't entirely sure if he would take my sniping the wrong way.

More likely he just thought I was being an annoying, overzealous female.

We walked in silence for a few more minutes – he apparently refused to answer me – his long legs taking purposeful strides and easily moving him along the lawn faster than my own. I tried to remember the way we took to my bedroom, as I followed him, once we got inside, determined not to get lost in the future. Finally, ten minutes and three winding staircases and four changes of directions later, we reached my room, for which I was grateful.

It was now well past two in the morning and I could feel the desperate call for sleep in every bone.

When my head touched the pillow, nearly instantaneously, I fell right asleep.

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***

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.

The next morning, I woke early, when the sun was just beginning to peek through the thick curtains pulled tightly over my great windows. When I pulled them back to reveal the great outdoors, the sun shone merrily at me from the horizon at the base of a cloudless, pinkish blue sky, without a hint of the previous nights stormy gloom to be seen.

It seemed surreal upon reflection, that this was the day after my wedding. I was a married woman, standing in my own home, staring out over the vastly extensive grounds belonging to my new family. I was now the new Lady Malfoy, having usurped Narcissa, a part of the aristocracy and the cusp of heightened society.

Once the sun was fully submerged in the great sea of blue in the sky I turned my thoughts to getting dressed, which turned out to be a more complicated undertaking than I had originally thought. The houselves had put them somewhere inexplicable, and it was several minutes of unproductive searching before I figured out that they had simply hung my clothes in the closet. The articles which did not require hanging had been arranged neatly on a shelf near the three glass mirrors.

I slipped on a pair of my favorite grey trousers in an attempt to feel more at home and comfortable, and a crisp white blouse, and checked in the mirror that my face was not ripe with streaky makeup from the night before and swept my voluminous hair into a pony tail before descending upon the breakfast room.

I found it with reasonably little trouble, following the smell of freshly cooked eggs and bacon down to the first floor in the residence part of the manor. By the time I got there it was half past seven and no one else was yet awake. Breakfast was sitting on the table waiting for me, however, so I assumed that the enforced slave labour had some sort of magic which allowed them to know if I was awake or not – either that, or they had simply been spying on me.

The knowledge, as it always had, that my breakfast was before me as the product of unpaid, forced labour made me feel guilty enough that I was no longer hungry. But the knowledge of where my food had come from also made me eat much more than I normally would have done out of the desire to make all of their hard work worthwhile.

Whilst at Hogwarts I had always struggled with my weight because I would end up eating second and sometimes even third helpings of everything because I'd wanted the house elves's work to be appreciated. Living with Ginny had helped me get back to my natural, unaffected weight, as we had cooked by ourselves, and both being thrifty, we had very rarely made more food than was enough for a single helping. But being here, under the care of overworked magical creatures again... Perhaps I would tell them never to make more than a plateful of food for me. They had to obey me now, didn't they? Or perhaps I would tell them just to feed me fruit and veggies with no bread or pasta so that I could eat as much of it as I wished and suffer no unseemly bulges around the middle.

My musings were interrupted by my new husband entering the large breakfast room (imagine, as I had several times already, an entire room devoted solely to the act of breaking the fast every morning. Extraordinary. A waste of space, perhaps, but extraordinary.) He sat down without a word and began to shovel the food onto his plate, suffering none of the same compunctions I had and seemingly determined to eat the entire contents of the table. I had never observed him eat before and I found it to be an oddly intimate – and uncomfortable – experience. He ate with the refined manners which befit his stature, neatly and politely and with much smaller mouthfuls than Harry or Ron. It surprised me that not all men ate with the grace of swine. But watching him pull the fork from his tightly clenched, pale lips, and then drag the metal off of his tongue to erase all traces of food made my stomach curdle – I felt like I was intruding on his privacy. I looked away.

"What are your plans for the day?" I asked, in a very see through attempt to break the silence. I did not expect for our 'honeymoon' to be anything special – or indeed, anything at all – but I did not expect him to just sit around in his wing of the house and do nothing. Rather, I expected him to resume his usual role of 'workaholic', and, frankly, I was more comfortable that way. It made it easier to pretend that life was still normal.

"I have no plans," he said with little inflection in his voice, after he finished chewing his bite of egg.

"Oh," I said.

"Would you like to see the grounds?" he asked me a moment later.

"Absolutely!" The view from my window had been something out of a fairy tale, and I had read in a book that the Malfoy holdings were the largest in any aristocratic family in Britain, and most of Europe as well. The estate was just above a thousand acres, with a natural, fair sized lake and a cluster of famous cliffs in which lived an extremely rare species of bird – the Speckled Eagle. It also eclipsed a corner of Sherwood Forest and had its own, densely populated forest entirely contained in the estate border, home to other rare animals and an entire pack of wolves, and it was called, predictably, Malfoy Forest.

"Should you like to go by horseback, broom, or in your – our – other form?" he asked. I did not have much fondness for horses, and I was afraid of heights, so the choice was obvious.

"I'd like to try out being a panther again," I told him.

"Very well," he replied, his blonde eyebrows quirked into a knowing arch. His eyes remained impassive, and he took a sip of his coffee, which he drank black and with no sugar. "We should get an early start, if we wish to see everything."

I couldn't see how we could possibly see everything in just one day, but didn't argue.

We changed into the great cats behind the house, on the huge, marble terrace, which was flanked with rows of perfectly groomed trees and tasteful statues depicting great Greek Gods and Goddesses. I was just as astonished during the day time at my sudden and inexplicable beauty, able to see even more detail in my coat in the reflection of the glass windows. In the sunlight I could see that I wasn't a true black at all, simply a very dark chocolate brown, with faintly lighter spots in a deep ochre spread lightly like sprinkled dust over my back and face. My eyes were a light amber in the rays of the sun and I could see clearly that I was less muscled and smaller than Draco, who was also darker and had a bigger head. His eyes were grey and startling against the stark darkness of his own fur, but he looked like a warrior, or a king. I was jealous.

But, I reflected happily on the night before, I was faster – if the results of the race were to be believed. And while I hadn't yet seen him try to jump, I was unconvinced that he could beat my leap into the tree.

He may have had more power, but it is a scientific fact that the leaner, smaller animals are usually more agile and quick and survive a good deal longer in the wild. Not that we were about to be stranded in a forest with only our cat instincts to survive, any time soon, but, it was a fact to be acknowledged, and one that I was not likely to forget – not when my entire life with Draco was a competition.

We trotted over the fields, around the house, and onto a gravel path. It was well groomed, obviously kept up with the rest of the regular grounds maitenance, which in any other great house would be astounding when considering the sheer volume of work with a house of similar size; but this was the Malfoy's we were talking about, and they were not like normal people.

The shade of the trees negated the need to pant overly much, and ensured that our coats did not become overwhelmingly warm. The flickering sunlight was interesting to see through eyes not my own, the sight blaring and shocking. It was hard to concentrate when it was as though a disco ball was spinning in front of my eyes, illuminating and darkening and then illuminating again, over and over and garishly fast. The bright chirping of the birds was louder to my ears and disorienting, their cheerful wakefulness was almost enough to drive me insane. After a while, I started to get dizzy and had to stop, flopping onto the ground in a way only a cat could do gracefully, my great paws blowing up a small cloud of dust particles into the air around my face. Draco heard my muffled impact on the ground and turned around, his facial expression furrily aggrieved. I could hear his groan.

I tried to mimic drinking, but I wasn't sure if he got the point, since it looked as if I were only licking the dusty, dirty ground. But he nodded his great head without looking overly confused – it was interesting that I could now distinguish the emotions of fellow animals, I could read their body language. He led me off the path a few hundred feet down and onto a little used animal path, which led to who knows where. I was impressed with his knowledge of his own estate, because there were many twists and turns and he made no signs to indicate that he was lost. Eventually, after the previous annoyance and discombobulation grew into a fully developed headache, he stopped at a creek running through the woods with a thin strip of pebbly beach on either side of the water. I could hear the croaking of small frogs in every direction and through the surface of the water I saw a tiny school of miniscule fish.

Abruptly I was overwhelmingly thankful to Draco. I leapt off the bank in a fit of unrestrained joy and landed with all four feet splayed and ready to displace the water and splashed a good ten feet in every direction. When I turned to look at him he looked mildly displeased but not angry, so I felt free to peddle around in the shallow water, until I found a deeper place that almost covered my back and spent a few moments completely submerging myself and lapping up the water greedily. It felt glorious to be cool and it calmed my headache.

After twenty minutes or so, he stepped gingerly into the water himself and began leading again, following the current. I realized that the flowing water probably fed into the lake and I spent the rest of the journey splashing and exploring and swimming when the current was deep enough. Draco only went into the water when it was unavoidable, as in one point when the foliage rose steeply on either side of the creek, too steep to climb, and the water bottlenecked into a rather faster flow over our heads. I loved swimming, but Draco looked like every bit the spoiled housecat and came out into the shallower parts annoyed and shivering and dripping wet. I was tempted to splash him or tackle him in just to prove that water wasn't all that bad but ignored my longing desires and restrained myself.

An hour later, we reached the lake – a truly massive thing probably a similar size to the Black Lake at Hogwarts, looking deep and cool, mint green in the center and cerulean blue near the beaches. At the far end I could see the great cliffs. They held imposing power, even from across the water, the color of wet pavement, and their shape demanding in presence and stature, cutting into the clear blue sky with jagged outcropping and tall, thin trees like blades of grass atop the walls. I could see the tiny specks of large birds against the lighter sky and follow their swirling and slightly blurry forms swinging around and around in lazy circles.

The water of the lake was warmer than the creek, a noticable difference where the two joined at the mouth of the creek, sand fine and formed into permanent, yet ever changing waves on the floor. Even from the banks, I could see the larger fish swimming in groups and larger schools and I could tell that the water was extremely clean and probably see-through almost all the way to the lake floor.

It was a rare sight for Britain, which had not many lakes, and most of them cold, and I was utterly thrilled that I had an entire lake in my very own backyard.

.

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***

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.

We spent the rest of the day wandering lazily and without any hurry or agenda around the lake and under the cliffs, where there was a tiny, ribbon thin strip of sand before the water swallowed the rest of the base whole. The water there was deep blue green and was quite obviously deep, almost like a sinkhole. The fish here were larger and darker and didn't swim in schools. But the birds, the rare Speckled Eagles, were also large and I saw one dive into the water and snatch a fish over half his own bodyweight.

When the sun began her long descent to the ground, she ducked behind the great cliffs and cast a cool grey shadow over the water and the trees and we decided to head home for supper. Draco went slowly for me, not in any rush and aware that I wanted to see everything.

The sun had burned out by the time we reached the Manor, only the hazy, pale orange glow left of her, fading into a midnight blue in which the moon already hung. A faint cropping of stars began to twinkle and the great grandfather clock in the dining room pronounced it to be nine thirty.

I was hungry and didn't eat much, choosing instead to go to my room and sleep.

"Thank you, Draco," I said with feeling just before I turned to leave the room. "I had a very nice day," I told him. "Thank you for showing me around." I inclined my head and left. His "you're welcome" only just reached my ears before I was completely out the door.

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_**Nine months before:**_

_It had been bound to happen, of course. When one seeks to research the basis for inequality, if there is any, and comes close to rending the fabric of society irreperable, there will obviously be some repurcussions. I am not trying to destroy the Ministry. I am not trying to bury traditions. I just want answers. And I am determined to find them – nothing will stop me. Not even excommunication, or expulsion from Great Britain._

_I hold the letter they sent me in my hands. It polite, well worded – leaving nothing to discussion. I am to be shipped off, there are no ways around it. I have three weeks to leave. Should I wish to appeal, I must make an appointment with the Wiznagemot within five days. Of course I want to appeal. But first, I have to find some way out of this._

_I need a plan._

_I begin to dig, through old law textbooks and through the Wizarding constitution translations. I find only one solution to my problem. If I want to stay, I have to marry. Preferably and upstanding member of the community, someone with enough power to keep me here. I need to ground myself to the very threads of law they think I want to cut. I need a pureblood._

_I have nothing against purebloods. I just want to know why. Why, why, why?_

_It hurts me that the world I have fought to save, sometimes putting my life in the way of those who now want to disbar me, wants me gone so badly. Why? What do they know, that I don't know? What do they think I will find?_

_I don't understand people. Give me science, give me mathematics. Give me history and arithmancy. Give me complicated spell casting, give me intricate charms, give me great literature and riddles. Anything, anything but human emotion. I was not made to be like them, and so I do not understand them. And understanding is all I have ever wanted. Why?_

_Because I am Hermione Granger. That's why._

_They will not get rid of me, because I am Hermione Granger._

_They will not force me to abandon what has become my entire life in these three months I have been researching this project, because I am Hermione Granger._

_They will not force quiet on me. They will not tear the words from my mouth, they will not censor me, because I am Hermione Granger._

_They will not rip me from my family, my friends, my entire world, because I am Hermione Granger._

_They will not outsmart me. They will not outmatch me. They will not manipulate the law to their wishes to hurt me. Because I am Hermione Granger, and I will not be beaten._

_If I have to thrust myself into the Lions den and become one of them, I will. If I have to manipulate in the same way that they will try to manipulate me, I will._

_I spend the next few days at the office, not going home to sleep at all, searching for even a whisper of scandal. A hint of a thread that I might exploit. Someone in trouble, someone in need of a wife. My credentials are exemplary, but for the blood, and I have not a single stain on my record. I am a hero, a war veteran, the brightest witch of the century, possibly since Rowena Ravenclaw. I am powerful. I would be a credit to any household, and I will use that to my advantage._

_And then, after I had almost given up, I hear it. Draco Malfoy needs a wife. He is in danger. But so am I._

_It takes little to persuade him. Some blackmail, some coercion. He is willing enough that the wedding spells will not have a problem. I am willing as well. The spell does not care for reasoning._

_The wedding is planned. I plan my appeal. I win._

_I am here to stay, and there is absolutely nothing they can do to shut me up._

_Nothing short of murder._

_._

_._

_._

**A/N:** Hello! I have finally updated! I must say, this story is taking a delightful turn in my head. :) I am very excited to continue this, and I am coming up with all sorts of wonderful twists and sharp corners and plot intrigue. Oh, the mystery. Hee hee.

Please review! You all know how much I love it. :)

Love Alexandra


	3. Trial

**Blood & Connection**

Chapter Three

**A/N: Hello everyone! As always, I love reviews (*hint hint*)! PS: You get to meet someone new this chapter! Everyone say hello to ----------- Malfoy! And through this lovely man, you shall learn a bit about Hermione's research!**

_I watch him glide down the aisle between the raised seats of the Wiznagemot, his robes swirling gently around his ankles, his graceful stride belying the trouble he was in; the extreme desperation of his current situation._

"_Name?" Demands the High Prosecutor, snarling softly in the light of his candle, his quill poised over his paper, ready to condemn or pardon with a simple check or cross. By the look on his face, I know his quill is set and ready over the little box which would condemn this man, my age, to Azkaban forever. And by the half-crazed smirk playing on his cracked, pale lips, I know which outcome he would prefer._

"_Draco Abraxas Apollo Black Malfoy," says the young man, his blond head raised and his voice proud, caressing the names his family has given him. For a moment I wish I had the same sort of familial greatness to boast of, but I don't, and I am alright with that. I have never heard his whole, full name before. I am surprised to know that he carries the name Black, and by the stiffening beside me, so is Harry. But I can admit, it does make sense. Sirius is dead, and the Black line has ended in name, and Malfoy is the last descendant. Harry got the house, but Draco must carry on the lineage. All at once, I realize how much Wizarding society stands to lose if Draco is sentenced to Azkaban for life - two great pureblood lines. I am not particularly enamoured with the division between Pureblood and Mudblood, but I do understand the symbolic significance. I might personally think Draco is a git, but he is the Wizarding equivalent of Royalty, and his line has a symbolic importance. If he is sentenced, it would be tantamount to Muggle society sentencing the Queen for treason to her own people, and then wiping out her entire family in one go. It would be heresy, a desecration of history and important symbolism._

_Suddenly, even though I came into this courtroom hoping for his immediate downfall, I want him to get out of here a free man. "Harry," I whisper, as the questioning begins, "Harry, you need to testify."_

"_What? Are you mad?" He's furious. _

"_Harry, if he goes, the Black line is dead!"_

"_The Black line is already dead. Sirius is gone, Hermione," he spits at me. I see his hands curled into fists, gripping his nicest pants like he's trying to strangle them._

"_No it isn't," I say, trying to make him understand the significance of Draco Malfoy. "The direct line is gone, but the family is still alive! Harry, please!"_

"_Why do you care, anyways? You're a mudblood? He's a pureblood? What's the difference to you?"_

_I flinch when he says 'mudblood' even though I know he is simply stating it as a fact within context and not trying to hurt me. "I know, but this is history, and we're just throwing it away, and you _know _we wouldn't have won without him."_

"_History," he whispers in a tone so derisive I am uncharacteristically insulted. I know he doesn't like history, I just forget. "Well, _you _know that he was just trying to save his own arse. He didn't give a shit if we won or lost."_

"_He has a family to protect," I say, "He had to think about them."_

"_So did we," he says, gesturing across the hall where most of the Weasleys are sitting, Ron as well, having chosen to sit with his parents for this one day. _

"_I know. And we did everything we could to help keep them safe, didn't we?" I look at him hard, waiting for him to give in. But he is being stubborn today, and I need to spell it out for him. "Ginny. Harry, you left Ginny to keep her safe, even though we both know she can fight almost as well as you." If not better, I think, glancing at her family again. Ginny might be slight and pretty, but her attack skills were absolutely on par with Harry, possibly higher – the girl had saved them countless times with her powerful jinxes, when the rest of them were still using Expeliarmus and Stupefy._

_Harry sighs and I know I've gotten somewhere. Draco is now recounting his attempted murder of Albus Dumbledore in a bored, carefully monotonous voice, and I think Harry might get irrationally angry again at the memory of his Headmaster and go back to being stubbornly against the freedom of Malfoy, but he surprises me, and relaxes in his seat. _

"_Fine," he says, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. "You owe me."_

"_Deal," I say, relieved._

_We wait until the Prosecutor, who is positively gleeful now, seeing the end of Draco Malfoy's good name, calls for any further witnesses. _

"_Going once," his nasal, slimy voice sneers to the room, raising his gavel, "Going twice, going -"_

"_I will testify," Harry says beside me, loudly and clearly to the courtroom. Whispers break out along with astonished gasps._

"_Name and position," growls the prosecutor, even though he obviously recognizes the voice. Everyone does. _

"_Harry James Potter, Order of Merlin First Class, Head Special Investigations Auror, Chief Correspondent to the Minister for Magic, testifying on the behalf of Draco Malfoy."_

"_On- on behalf, you say?" Squeaks the prosecutor, uncomprehendingly._

"_Yes. I wish to offer proof of Draco Malfoy's innocence."_

"_In – innocence?"_

_The roar in the room is palpable now, and as Harry begins his descent to the floor, I look at Draco Malfoy, whose steel masked expression is gone, replaced by a shocked gape. _

"_Innocence," Harry affirms when his feet touch the platform for the witness. He sits down, looking very at ease and pleased with himself, even though I know he's hating himself for doing this._

"_Very well then," the Prosecutor mumbles. His face is downtrodden and depressed. If Harry Potter was willing to testify on behalf of a criminal, his case was probably over. "Proceed with your testimony."_

_Harry looks at me, and I can see the faint glare behind his glasses. I feel another pair of eyes and look at Ron, but he isn't looking at me, he is staring furiously at Harry, mouthing obscenities. I look to Draco, and I jump nervously when he is staring directly at me, having recovered his mask of indifference and raising his eyebrow. _

_Harry is also slow, but methodical, carefully recounting each event as it happened, making absolutely certain not to unintentionally implicate one of his friends or leave room for question. He could be a Prosecutor himself, I think, he learned well at a young age. I suppose we all did._

"_He saved my life," Harry says finally, rubbing his knee absently, where I know there lies a scar which might have been a stump of a leg if Draco had not taken out the Death Eater who had tried to curse the Boy-Who-Lived at the last second, preventing Harry from further injury, and allowing the Light to win the war. Harry usually tried to forget that it had been Draco watching his back, and not Ron, who had been in another part of the castle fighting with me, and he'd only told Ron and I because we'd noticed the injury after Voldemort was dead. It had probably taken all of Harry's personal strength to thank Draco afterwards, much less this, publicly defending him._

_It gives me an entirely new source of pride, watching Harry do this, for no personal gain. I hope Malfoy knows what kind of thing Harry is doing for him. I hope Malfoy says 'thank-you'._

"_You're quite sure these events are truthful?" The Prosecutor wheedles, fishing for any last hint of unexploited scandal._

"_Quite sure," Harry says firmly, moving both hands to press the armrests of his hard wooden chair. _

"_Very well then." The Prosecutor says, a dejected air in his tone. "You may go."_

_Harry nods and stands, and the whispers begin again, feverish and angry, only ceasing when Harry is again seated beside me and the Prosecutor bangs his gavel sharply, calling for a renewal in order. Harry's hands are shaking, whether with anger or nervousness, I don't know._

_We stare tensely down at Draco for the few minutes the Prosecutor takes to deliberate, wondering how much worse the drawn out suspense must be for the young man down on the platform._

_The Prosecutor returns with loud, stomping footsteps. He does not formally reconvene the court, he simply barks out, "All for the prosecution of Draco Abraxas Apollo Black Malfoy?"_

_Of the one hundred and twenty formal members of the courtroom, fifteen raise their hands, all pure-bloods. I haven't felt so relieved in a long time. I haven't had much to get excited over, and even while my heart feels like it can beat freely again after waiting so long in tense agitation, I can still not quite understand why I care so much to begin with._

_Out of respect for the court system, the High Prosecutor is bound to ask as well for those in favor of Malfoy's release to raise their hands. The response is a deafening movement of cloak and fabric and body parts, signaling the sound of Draco Malfoy's freedom. _

"_Draco Malfoy, you are hereby pardoned of any and all charges before you, standing before the court of the Wiznagemot in its entirety, and no more such charges may ever be again brought against you. You are dismissed, and the court extends its hand in a formal offer of camaraderie. May your freedom bring you joy." The High Prosecutor grits from behind his teeth, his strident, angry voice, carrying over the happy and surprised chatter among the court, barely reaching my ears. My eyes are still watching Draco._

_He stands from his seat, his bonds released with the magic of the room, and he holds his hand out as the Prosecutor's page comes down from the High Box with Draco's wand, holding it tremulously in front of him. Draco takes it silently and walks off the platform, stepping lightly onto the stairs, his grace fully returned and intact, and his feet lead him up to Harry and I. This scares me._

"_Potter," Malfoy says, his blond hair flashing in the candlelight and his white, straight teeth shine in the glow. Harry is startled, standing clumsily, dropping his gloves from his lap. _

"_Malfoy," Harry says, his voice tight. I stand too, still staring. Malfoy looks different up close. Bigger, obviously. But also smaller. More like a man, and less like an effervescent volcano waiting to erupt. But when his steely eyes catch mine, I see that he isn't much different from a volcano after all. Molten silver, what should have been a warm, sensual color in the light of the candles, a cold, icy blue grey with only anger and flint. From this close a distance, I can see the light, barely-there imperfections in his skin. I imagine that his skin is hot under the coolness of his skin tone._

"_I wanted to -," Draco swallows, "Thank you. Thank you, for... that."_

"_Don't thank me," Harry says, and I silently beg him not to say what I know is coming next, but he says it anyways: "Thank Hermione."_

_Draco's gaze swivels back to me, and I feel like sinking into the floor. "You?" He asks imperiously, obviously thinking the same thing I was – why did I care?_

"_Me." I say, too lost for words to come up with anything else._

"_Well," Malfoy says after staring at me for an uncomfortable moment. "Thank you."_

_And then he walks off, leaving Harry and I to stare after him with matching bewildered expressions. _

_I go to bed that night, after following my usual routine to the letter, but I can't fall asleep._

_I loathe Divination and all that goes with it,but the war has taught me to trust my gut. And now, my gut is whispering softly to me, so softly that I am straining to hear it, and it is keeping me awake. And my gut is telling me that something has changed._

_***_

On the second day of my marriage to Draco Malfoy, I woke up with the grudging knowledge that I needed to do some work. I had neglected my research for three days, and even though I was now granted a small amount of immunity to fears of deportation, I also knew that the Ministry of Magic was a good deal smarter than it had been when I was a girl, and I knew that eventually, they would figure out a loophole. It was only the power of my new family that was keeping me in England, and as had been proved when Draco had been put on trial to begin with, almost three years before, the Malfoy's, powerful as they were, were not infallible. I needed to get some concrete evidence for my theories, and quickly.

I felt awful doing so, but I snapped my fingers and called for a House Elf to bring me some breakfast to my laboratory. While I was waiting I arranged a cauldron into a work station similar to what had been in my old office, before I had been fired, and pulled out the necessary ingredients and the precious vials of blood, which I had stored in a wooden box, spelled to be unbreakable, impenetrable, and I had charmed the environment to maintain a period of stasis at 0 degrees.

Just as I was pouring my liquid ingredients into separate bowls, arranging them neatly in a half moon circle, the Elf popped into the room, hovering over a work table behind me, a beautiful, scrumptious smelling tray with an omelet and coffee. My stomach rumbled and I thanked the little creature, smiling at him. He seemed dazed when he popped back to where ever it was he went. I supposed the previous Lady of the Manor hadn't smiled much.

I turned back to my work, letting the omlette cool first. I surveyed my hastily written list of ingredients and double checked that I had each portion in the correct amounts.

_3 Parts Nettle Leaves, powdered_

_.5 Parts Boomslang Skin Juice_

_7 strips Bulls Tongue, 1 inch each_

_4 Ounces Fennel, diced and dried_

_1 Ounce Thyme_

_1 Ounce Bezoar, dried _

_1 inch strand donor's hair_

_2 drops donor blood_

_12 drops Dragons blood, added last_

I wasn't entirely sure what would happen, but if the properties were correct, which they were, the potion should produce the means for a diagnostic spell, breaking the blood down into separate, defined components, known in the muggle world as a reading not unlike a DNA test. I would use my own blood for her first tests, as I had a fairly inexhaustible supply.

An hour later, after heating the cauldron to the perfect temperature and adding my base, purified water, I turned back to my now stone cold omlette. It was just when I'd shovelled my first bite into my mouth when there was a knock at the door.

"Come in," I called through the bits of tomato and egg.

The oak door creaked open and in stepped my new grandfather-in-law - Abraxas Malfoy. His silver hair was tied back into a slick, short pony tail, pulling tight the skin on his forehead. He was still a handsome man, or at least, I could see the remnants of the strong jaw, the neat, patrician lines of his face, the aristocratic tilt of his cheekbones. I had met him only once or twice before, and at the wedding. He came closer and crossed to the other side of the second worktable, sitting directly across from me, and arranging his expensive, tailored robes around his legs as he waited for me to swallow my biteful of food.

"I hope you don't mind," he said, his strange blue-white eyes pinned on my face, "I wished to speak with you."

"No, not at all," I said, "I was just taking a break."

"Good." He continued to stare at me, unblinking. I forced myself not to look down. After another moment, he nodded slightly and muttered to himself, "Good," suddenly looking softer. The harsh lines in his face became less pronounced and his eyes relaxed.

"Was there anything in particular you wished to speak about?" I asked slowly. He watched me as if in a stupor before answering.

"Yes, actually," he said. "I know that you are a muggleborn," he began, making himself more comfortable at the table. I stiffened. "Don't misunderstand me, I consider you no threat. I am not like that son of mine." He cleared his throat. "I merely wish to inquire as to the – _activities –_which placed you in such a misfortune situation as to be threatened with excommunication from the wizarding world."

"Oh," I said.

"Specifics, please." He said. At my wary expression he clarified. "My interests are purely in protecting the Malfoy name, Hermione. Ever since Lucius threatened the survival of 'Malfoy' with his _extracurricular activities_, and Draco got himself put on trial for much the same thing, the family interests have fallen to me. But I believe you know this." He cleared his throat again. "I am, until Draco's twenty-fifth birthday, the acting head of this family and her interests. As such, it is very much my business if a new addition to the family represents a threat."

"Sir, with all due respect, why did we not have this conversation _before _I married into the family?"

His lips curved into the slightest touch of a smile. "Because I don't particularly care what it is you do, so long as you do not shame the family." I grimaced. If anything, I might _destroy _his family. "Again, don't misunderstand me. Malfoy's thrive on controversy, and Malfoy's do best when surrounded by some degree of mystery, and above all, power. Draco tells me you developed an idea for a research project. When I say shame, I mean that, should you fail, or find yourself unable to back up the bluster which has landed you in trouble, _that _is shame." He folded his fingers. "And, as I believe you will soon find out, Malfoys do not fail." His eyes became piercing again. "Now tell me what exactly you are researching."

I stared at him in shock for a few moments. I had expected, from our last encounters, a hard, puritanical man filled with irrepressible pride and pomp. But Abraxas was surprisingly so... interesting.

"Blood," I said finally. "I'm researching blood."

All of a sudden, Abraxas Malfoy's face lit up with barely restrained mischievousness. "O-ho!" He leaned forward.

"Yes, well-"

"The beginning, girl, start at the beginning."

"Alright." His new-found intensity was somewhat off-putting. "Okay." The beginning, I thought. What was the beginning? "When I was told I was a witch, I was just ten years old. I was so excited, to finally realize that all of my misgivings about being different, never quite belonging in the muggle world, which was all I knew, were true. Suddenly I was part of something different, special. I was among other people like me – other outcasts, people who didn't quite fit in. But when I got to Hogwarts, I realized that in all of my excitement, I'd never realized that not everyone _was _going to be like me. Not all of the other students were raised like muggles. In fact, I was again, the minority. I was still the outsider. And no matter how hard I worked to prove myself, to make everyone believe I belonged, I was still a mudblood. And so I wanted to know more.

"I looked for books. I wrote to scholars. I spoke to professors. But everyone had the same answer. I was a muggleborn, lesser, and my magic was supposed to be less powerful. But I was the top of my class. I was the brightest witch in fifty years! I knew that the same drivel they fed everyone else was no good. It was wrong. So during the summers, and during the year if my parents could send me books, I tried to find information on the other side of the equation. The side most wizards ignored – the muggle side. And so I discovered genetics.

"The Wizarding community is built on the misconception that muggles are stupid and worthless and blind, but I know it's not true. You have no idea how advanced muggle scientists are in understanding genetics – that's the study of, essentially, why people are born the way they are. Genetics determine everything. You were blond, with blue eyes, because your genetics predetermined it to be so. And, likewise, your genetics passed on those traits to your son, though I suspect your wife had grey eyes, which is where Lucius and Draco got their eye-color from. Do you understand, so far?

"After discovering genetics, I realized that Wizards follow the same rules, and therefore, there must be a 'magic gene'. I stole blood from a half-blood and a pure-blood, and obviously I have muggle-blood. After the war, I retrieved the samples and began my job at the Ministry as a Research Assistant to a Head Scholar in the Department for Genaeology. We mostly just went through old letters and artifacts and created broader family trees, but when I tried to discuss genetics with him, he told me I was crazy, and that he would fire me if I brought it up again. For a while, I worked in secret. But when I was working on my theories, I needed another professional ear to critique my ideas and give me feedback. He reported me to the Head Auror and told him I was a threat to Wizarding Security.

"I was given a warning and my license to roam the Ministry was restricted, but I still had the Geneaology Department almost to myself. I made copies of the five Great Pureblood lines and set out determining the instances of Squibs, intermarriage between close relatives, and genetic deformities and cases of insanity. From that, I got close to many family secrets, including some, admittedly, of the Malfoys. The Bulstrodes got wind of my research and demanded that I be fired and my license revoked, and, as they are an old family, they got their wish. But the Bulstrodes told several other of the families I was researching what I was doing, and the lot of them tried to have my wand snapped.

"I wasn't given a trial, because the Head Prosecutor still dislikes me after helping Draco escape imprisonment almost three years ago. I was given a deportation notice, and I was told to hand in my wand. They were to send me to Canada. But in the two weeks I was given to prepare, I researched the Bills and Charters and the Laws of the Ministry, and I discovered a loophole. Marriage."

I stopped and looked at Abraxas, who was studying me intently, unnervingly silent.

"And now you are here," he said finally, rubbing his jaw with his fingers. He looked at me apraisingly for another second or so before slapping his hand back onto the table, startling me. "Excellent!"

"Sir?"

"Truly excellent!" He smiled at me, the first genuine smile I had ever seen on the lips of a Malfoy done without malice. It was beautiful. "Tell me, what do you plan to do when your research is complete?"

"Well, I had planned to publish it, but-"

"Hermione," he interrupted, still looking positively jovial, "I am very relieved."

I gaped.

"You have a brain on you, girl. Lets just hope you've got the nerve." He stood from his stool and crossed the room to the door, turning around to add, just before he left, "You have the full backing of the Malfoy family, Hermione. I shall expect weekly progress reports, and in return, you shall have research assistants, should you require them, and unlimited supplies of any ingredients and materials you require." He opened the door. "Good luck."

And then he was gone, leaving me to stare dumbly at the door through which he had disappeared, stunned into silence. What had just happened? Had _the _Abraxas Malfoy just offered me financial and academic backing?

I looked at the clock. It was nearly three in the afternoon and I still needed to go to Diagon Alley. Shaking my head I cast a stasis over my workstation, slightly annoyed that my work had been disrupted, but astonished and grateful to Abraxas for his visit and promise.

A half hour later, I was in Diagon Alley, staring nervously at the entrance to Knocturn Alley, my purse crossed tightly over my chest and my wand handle in my sleeve and ready to be grabbed. I needed Shredded Romulian Dragon liver, and the only place to buy it in London was Knockturn Alley. I didn't want to go in, but I was desperate, and I saw no other alternative.

At any rate, I was Lady Malfoy now, Queen of the Underworld. I should have been safe, shouldn't I?

Gritting my teeth and clamping my jaw firmly shut, I straightened my back and straightened my cloak. I was Lady Malfoy, a War Hero, and Harry Potter's best friend. I was going _in. _

I marched forwards, every footstep taking me closer and closer to the underbelly of the deep, dark heart of the Underworld. Every echo made my heart leap, every scuffle made my breath freeze. My hands were cold, but I kept going. I tried not to let my anxiety show on my face.

At the end of the Main street, there was a tiny Apotheke, run by a German witch with a heavy accent and hair even wilder and bushier than mine. She was a stern woman, and I wondered, as I walked into her relatively clean store, how she had managed to set up shop in such a dangerous part of the city.

"Vass do you need?" She asked, her chins wobbling. I swallowed and told her my list. She nodded to herself, waving her wand to call each item forth to the desk. She weighed and bagged each ingredient, and held out her hand for payment. Five galleons. If I hadn't just married the richest man in the United Kingdom, both muggle and wizard alike, I might have choked.

I handed her the slip which permitted her to withdraw the amount directly from the Goblins at Gringotts, signed and dated it, and spelled the Malfoy crest onto the bottom of the page. The witch stared at me, at the paper, and back at me. "Lady Malfoy?" she asked, her voice suddenly tremulous. I was in no mood to soothe her anxiety today. I was nervous and wanted out.

"Yes."

The woman bowed hastily. I grew more uncomfortable.

"Good day, ma'am. Thank you." I shrunk the bag and stuck it in my purse, sheathing my wand, but not completely.

"Good day, Lady Malfoy!" She called behind me. I nodded and carried on my way out the store.

I stayed on the sidewalk, focusing on the destination in front of me, a tiny bead of light at the end of the dark, dank tunnel through which I trudged, ignoring the offers from storekeepers, the temptations from saleswitches. I ignored the whistles and the catcalls, and the attempts of old, decrepit men to gain my attention. I felt sick, but I kept trudging, trudging, trudging, until, at the corner of Main Street and Knockturn Avenue, I felt a sharp prick in my shoulder. And before I could turn to see what had poked me, a hand covered my mouth, and the world went black.


	4. Escape

**Blood and Connection**

**Chapter Four**

_He does not notice my entrance, though I do not know why. He must be preoccupied, daydreaming, something. I am the only other person in his office, and I did not bother hiding my appearance. I just opened his door, told his secretary that I was here on private business and that she should take her fake tits and bleached hair elsewhere, and I stood in front of him. It is only after I clear my throat that he notices me. He is surprised._

"_What are you doing here, Granger?" he growls at me. Even since I aided him in his narrow avoidance of Azkaban, we are not on polite terms. In fact, I am certain that he still views me as nothing more than a meddlesome Mudblood. That is fine; I still view him as nothing more than a stuck up, pompous Pureblood – that, and a means to an end._

_A few years ago, this might have made me feel ashamed. But war changes people. Sometimes for the better._

"_I came to speak with you." I move to stand behind the chair across the desk from him, hoping that he might take the hint and invite me to sit down. He doesn't._

"_About?"_

_I look at him hard, before deciding that if I am going to do this, I might as well go all the way. I pull the chair out and slam into it. I see him tense, and I know that I have just agitated him, severely. "I have a proposition for you." He says nothing, but then again, I do not expect him to. I take a breath, steady my hands, pin my eyes on his. "You need a wife."_

_His eyes widen, barely, but enough so that I notice. _

"_And not just any sort of wife," I continue, "But a Mudblood." I lean forward in my chair and rest my elbows on my knees. I'm not going anywhere._

_Draco Malfoy leans back in his chair and places his folded hands under his chin, resting his elbows on the high, winged armrests of his chair. He looks faintly amused, but I see the tiny stress lines on the edges of his mouth. "And why would you think that, even if this were true, I would marry you of all people."_

_This is what I was expecting, and I am prepared for it. "Because you need me." He snorts, and I ignore him, smirking. "There are no other choices for you, I'm afraid. All the other Muggleborns are either already married, barren, or dead. I've checked. Georgiana Somers is terminally ill after that Spine Severing curse she received in the Final Battle; Lauren Boot is engaged to marry a cousin of Seamus Finnegan; Gwynneth Jones is married to her third cousin, Joseph Jones; Jane St. Clair is engaged to Justin Finch-Fetchley's second cousin, Brom; Anne Smith is in Azkaban for attempted murder; Joanne Popplewell is barren, due to an infection caused by prolonged exposure to the Cruciatus Curse. There was also the possibility of Hera Fordyce, but she is a mere fifteen years old, and quite unsuitable; also, Vera Blake might have been an option, but she has just found out she's pregnant with her boyfriend, and so she too, is unsuitable for you. Therefore, I am your only option._

"_And before you applaud me for my hard work, let me remind you that you owe me."_

"_Really? Whatever for," he drawled, looking a bit panicked and not as suave as he obviously wished to be._

"_Because if it weren't for me, you would be in Azkaban right now, and the Malfoy name would have died out, forever." I stood up, not waiting for him to refute me. "You know where to find me," I said. "I'll give you a week to make up your mind." And then I left. I didn't notice until I was already in the lift, heading back to the Atrium, that my hands were still shaking. _

***

"My, my, my..." said a voice at the level of my ear, a sound silky smooth and yet filled with sharp edges and malice. I couldn't see anything, and it took the rubbing of my eyelids against fabric as I tried frantically to blink to tell me that I was wearing a blindfold. Shoved in my mouth and tasting foul was a rag, dry and rough on my lips and tongue. "The new Lady Malfoy, isn't it?" I heard a chuckle and felt a light breeze against my skin as the owner of the voice straightened.

I could not say anything, and refused to acknowledge anything with the nod of my head.

"How lucky for you that your fortunes have so obviously improved since the last time we met," said the voice again, a voice I vaguely recognized, but maddeningly, I could not remember where from. A man, raspy but dangerous, a threat... "You must accept our _congratulations _on your rise through the ranks of society. Isn't that right, Thomas?" Thomas, Thomas... Either a first name, or a last name – if a last name, definitely not Dean, unless he had changed his ideals since last I saw him. First name then. And he had said '_our_'. Our – How many was 'our'? Two or over. Whoever was holding me operated within a group, or with a partner.

I tried to feel, subtly, with my hands, how tightly I was bound. I was bound tightly - not tightly enough to hurt, but if I tried to pull my hands free, I would rub my skin raw. I repressed my fear, like I had learned so long ago to do in the war, took a deep breath, and I tried to carefully analyze everything around me.

There was the light pitter patter of dripping water. A faucet, or a leaky tap, perhaps? A smell of mildew and rot... I was somewhere old, derelict, unkempt. As my kidnapper stepped away from me, the floorboards creaked. An old building. It was possible I was still in Knockturn Alley. How long had I been unconscious?

For a moment it was quiet in the room, but for the dripping, and I could hear the soft buzz of a city which could never be completely silent... traffic, chatter, construction... I was still in London, I was sure, or at least, in a larger city. If I screamed, someone might be able to hear me.

"We know what you're doing, Granger. Sorry, _Malfoy_." A cough, hastily covered. "We know that old fool Abraxas thinks he can control you, and perhaps Lucius does too, but the son... I knew we should have taken care of him when we had the chance."

I tempered my breathing and tried to concentrate; tried not to give in to my panic.

"We always knew the Malfoy name was falling. Old Lucius always did try, he did, to keep it relevant. But the thing was, 'Malfoy' just isn't that important anymore. Bad business, bad investments, bad deals. _Bad name_." What bad deals? Investments?

"Lucius just couldn't handle the responsibility." Another voice, the second man. Thomas. His voice is thin and parched, almost feminine. I do not recognize it. Somewhat cockneyed accent – not a Pureblood.

"As I was saying, Granger; the time has come for a new era in Wizarding Society." A rival family? Only four options... Bulstrode (possible, if not probable), Zabini (less likely – Zabini's were allied with Malfoy in most matters, neutral in others), Parkinson (next best guess after Bulstrode), or the Greengrass's (notorious golddiggers, but not usurper's – they didn't like to do the dirty work themselves). Judging by the fact that the voice was familiar, it was either the Parkinsons, or the Bulstrodes. Taking into account my recent, unhappy history with the Bulstrodes, I was betting on Atticus Bulstrode, or one of his sons, of which there were many.

"And you, _Lady Malfoy_, are going to be at the very center of it."

I wished he would just get on with his purpose with me. He was stalling. Why?

I thought of Harry, who would probably be struggling right now and muttering obscenities and insults through the rag in his mouth,if he were in my position. Ron, who would be terrified and full of rage. Draco, who would be cooly superior and unruffled, but disdainful. Ginny, who would be fighting back like a hellcat. It was time for action.

I started to gnash my teeth on the rag, spitting, biting, pushing it from my mouth. I snarled until a hand came nearby and pulled the rag from my mouth. "What do you want," Thomas asked shortly, snapping. I tried to bite his hand, but he had already pulled away.

"Water," I said, croaking. In truth, my mouth was very dry. I heard a grumble and kept track of which direction the footsteps were travelling. Ahead of me. As far as I knew, the other voice was in front of me as well. I started to scratch at my wrist bindings, tugging with the tips of my fingers. I noticed that whoever had tied me up did not know how to tie a good, strong knot. The ends began to fray apart and I loosened the first tie before the footsteps came back. Perfect.

I opened my mouth to accept the water, and after a gulp, I closed it. And then, in a hard, quick motion, I slammed my head forward, praying that Thomas's body would still be there. It was, and the impact was enough to shift my blindfold enough that I could see a sliver of the floor, along with a pair of feet that weren't my own. The cup smashed on the floor and I could feel the cold water splash my feet. A hand came under my chin and squeezed painfully, lifting my head up. The hand moved, and then a staggering blow was laid against my cheek. The blindfold shifted even more. I lolled my head backwards, trying to ignore the steady, blunt throb of pain in my cheek. There; threaded through the loop of his belt was my wand.

I watched the feet leave me, going back to the source of the water. I again set to work on the knots at my wrists, and after a moment, I loosened the second tie. I tested the strength of the rope. Still too tight. I felt with my fingers, prodding, mapping. There were two more ties. I worked as fast as I could, and I was on the verge of unraveling the third, when the feet came back. I did my best not to appear alert.

"Little, busy bee, aren't we," said the first voice. The Bulstrode. For a second, my heart froze and I feared he had seen me working at the knots. But he continued blithely, and I restrained myself from showing my relief. "Silly girl, you think.."

It was gone. I had miscounted. The binding was untied. I held onto the rope so that it wouldn't fall and carefully, with as little movement as I could, wound it around the backing of the chair.

If at all there was a bonus in my marriage to Draco, it was this.

I changed.

Somehow, perhaps as an effect of my urgency and my frantically beating heart, the change felt almost instant. One minute, I was Hermione. The next, I was the panther, roaring fiercely as I scratched the blindfold from my larger, sleeker head. And then, like a whole new world, I could see.

And this time, I let my instincts prevail. I was _all _cat.

I attacked the Bulstrode first. Regrettably, I still did not recognize him... he must have been a distant brother or son, with a voice similar to the one I remembered due to familial relation. I went for his face first, slashing with the claws I had not yet had occasion to use, and three deep, blood-welled lines tore into the flesh of his face. I smelled it; the iron, metallic and sweet, a smell I did not entirely object to. I saw behind him the quick movement of a hand reaching for a wand, and I kicked myself with my hind legs into the air, leaping over the shocked body of Bulstrode, through the air of the room, and right into the chest of Thomas, whose eyes were as large as saucers and whose face was white as milk. I bit his hand and pawed the wand into a corner, where it clattered to the ground, echoing hollowly against the walls. I did not stop to think before I went for his throat, sinking my razor sharp, elongated Canine teeth deep into his neck. Blood sprang up around my fangs, gushing into my mouth with an acrid taste that soaked my tongue. I bit down hard and crushed his pharynx, larynx, and esophagus. His throat rattled with unused breath, and the heated pulse of his blood slowed, and eventually stopped entirely, and then he was dead. I unlocked my jaw and moved back. I turned my head to Bulstrode, who was trying to get up.

I bounded back over to him and was just about to crush his throat as well, before a human thought stopped me. I would find out more if he was alive. So I batted his head as hard as I could with my paw, and he was knocked out cold.

I went back to Thomas, took my wand from his belt with my teeth, and glanced furtively around the room, looking for my purse. My purse was lying in a corner, thankfully still closed. I took that into my mouth as well, trying to keep the strap off the ground so I didn't trip, and then I made my escape.

The window was open a small crack and I batted it open. Fifteen feet from the ledge was the roof of the next building, about ten feet below my floor. I quickly summed the probability of my making it, and realized I would have to take the chance. I pulled myself onto the ledge and curled my tail down for balance, gathered my strength into my hind legs as I had done in the tree two days before, and then I pushed. I soared through the air with my tail arced out behind me, an extension of my spine, and landed, just barely, on the roof. I scrabbled at the surface with my claws and some pebbles were dislodged and fell over the building's edge.

I didn't look down.

I darted around the side of the steps leading to the innards of the building and set down my things. I changed back, a much slower process than it had been to change into the animal, and sat down with shaky legs stretched out in front of me. I could still taste the blood in my mouth, but I didn't know if I had time or not to stop and think. As soon as my breath was even enough to function, I pulled my wand to my side, hauled the strap of my purse over my head, and stood, using the wall for support.

.

.

I apparated, as best I could, to Malfoy Manor. In my dizziness, I overshot the distance and ended up near the pond. I tumbled to the ground, losing my balance, and I landed with my face in the sand. I sat up, groaning, and I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. It came away smeared with half dried blood which I knew was not my own. Before I could help myself and hold it back, I had retched all over the ground.

The sun was dipping to the level of the horizon and clouds were streaked with vivid reds and oranges. The grounds were silent; not even the sound of the groundskeeper trimming the lawn and maintaining the hedges. I trembled my way to my feet, but suddenly realized that the metal I smelled was the blood under my nose, and I fell again. Hating myself for doing it, I snapped my fingers, and a House Elf appeared at my side.

"My Lady!" it exclaimed, in a high, tremulous voice.

"Would you take me to my rooms, please," I asked, swallowing heavily. "And my purse... Please bring my purse..."

"Yes, My Lady," it said, and it snapped its fingers. I was raised a few feet in the air, and then I was moving quickly over the ground as if on some sort of magic carpet. The little creature took me straight to my rooms as I asked and laid me gently on my bed. "Shall we be cleaning you up, My Lady?"

"Please ready a bath for me, would you?" As the creature nodded, I asked, "And where is my husband?"

"He is in his study, miss. He says he is not wanting to be disturbed."

"Please disturb him and tell him that it is absolutely imperative that he come see me right away." The elf nodded and popped away. I heard another pop and then the sound of the tap running at the end of my closet hallway, and I started loosening my dirty, battered robes. I happened to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror over my writing desk and almost vomited again. There was half dried, half wet blood all down my front, where Bulstrodes life had spilled from my mouth. I had stains all over my face, vivid scarlet on my chin and my upper lip, like a hairless, disturbing moustache and beard. I still wasn't sure how long I had been unconscious for, but my hair looked like I hadn't washed it in a month; a wildly snared and curling mane about my head, and I noticed how much I looked like an African Lion. Perhaps a Lion would have suited me better than a Panther.

I was just trying to pull my shaky feet out of my shoes, sitting back on the bed, when Draco came charging in, Abraxas behind him. Draco had his usual, stern look upon his face, his lips set in a grim and no-nonsense line. Sometimes he reminded me of Minerva. Abraxas looked more concerned than I had ever seen him, but he too wore the mask of set determinism and singlemindedness that set apart all Malfoys... until he saw me. And then Draco saw me.

"Fuck," Draco swore and he hurried over. "What the hell happened to you? Where where you – its been hours, and -"

"Hush, Draco!" Abraxas said sharply. Draco didn't seem to be offended... he just set his mouth again and stared at me intently. His eyes found the red stains all over my face and his eyes hooded. He raised a finger to touch my chin and his finger came away streaked with red.

"Is this yours?" he asked, his voice tightly controlled. I shook my head. And then my eyes began to burn.

It hadn't seemed real until this moment – the fact that I had killed a man in cold blood, in the form of a monster. A ferocious animal with feral instincts that I had willingly let control my actions. I had just _murdered_ a man. And I felt so... _cold. _Empty. Unconcerned. Did he have a wife? Children? A Girlfriend? Family? What if I could have handled it differently? Did he really deserve to die? I hadn't let them explain their plans... What if all they'd wanted was to make a deal? What if I was going to be returned safely to Malfoy Manor in the end?

Why couldn't I _feel_ something?

I felt, with horror, a hot, fat tear glide silently down my cheek, where it mixed with blood and fell in a swirling, muted red blob onto my forearm. Draco didn't know what to say. I didn't know why I was crying – I hadn't cried since fourth year. Not really. This was just my own frustration, leaking in the only way my body knew how. This wasn't grief. This was befuddlement. This was questioning. This was anger, mostly with myself.

Abraxas pushed his grandson gently out of the way and knelt before me, taking my hands firmly in his. He motioned his head for Draco to assist me with the removal of my stockings.

"Hermione, I know this is going to be difficult, so we aren't going to ask you now, alright?" He swished his wand at my closet. "I've summoned a vial, and we're going to make a pensieve, and then you're going to rest until you feel comfortable discussing what's happened, alright?" I nodded as he reached into the air to snatch the waiting glass vial and pull the stopper free. He handed me my wand, which was sitting a foot from my hand, and guided my cold fingers so that the blunt of my wand was touched to my temple. "There," he said. I murmured the incantation and visualized the memory I wanted to extract, and then he was done. He stoppered it and put it in his pocket, and I was no longer burdened with it, at least for now. I nodded my thanks and he patted my hand in a fatherly way I did not expect from him, and then he quit the room, leaving me with my husband.

"Thank you," I said, motioning to my sockless feet. He nodded. He reached up and began to undo the buttons at my collar. It was an odd situation – his undressing me. I felt nothing for this man, except perhaps a faint respect for his steadfast upholding of his own values and beliefs. And here he was, removing me of my robes.

He pulled the sleeves from my arms and the garment pooled at my hips. I tried to undo my dress, but my fingers were still shaking and he moved his hand to cover mine and pushed them gently back down into my lap. He removed my dress, and he helped me stand so he could pull the two layers down my legs and onto the floor, where they sat at my feet. I was now only in a bra and panties, but he didn't seem to notice except to give me a once over to check that I wasn't injured.

"I don't think I can make it to the bath," I said, gesturing. "I'll call an elf – thank you for-"

"Save the elf some trouble," he said matter-of-factly, and he scooped me up lightly into his arms as though I weighed nothing. He carried me to the bath and sat me on the edge. He held one hand at the small of my back to support me, but turned away so I could quickly undo my bra and slip my panties down my legs. He didn't even look at them when he vanished them. And then he stared straight at my forehead the entire time he helped me into the water. His hand, while grazing my back, never went anywhere that I didn't want it to go, which I appreciated.

"Thank you," I said again, as the water enveloped me. "Really, you didn't need to-" I broke off when I saw the blood swirling in the water and felt sick again.

"Close your eyes," he said quietly, but in a tone that I knew meant I was expected to obey. I did, and then I felt the calm, insistent strokes of a cloth against my cheek, rubbing away the grime and dirt. He could have just used a cleaning charm. He could have vanished away the blood. I wasn't sure why he was going through all this trouble, but it made me feel more comfortable, like he actually cared, and I didn't want him to stop. It was like he was showing me his acceptance of me as his wife. Paying his respects by keeping me company and doing this basic service. I was grateful. I knew we would never have the loving, deeply passionate marriage that my parents had... but I wanted to at least be friends. Companions. Perhaps lovers, if it felt right. This, at least, allowed me to pretend.

He moved his hand down to my neck and his other hand came to support me at my nape. The sudsy water made his fingers slippery and I felt that I was going to fall out of his hands. He didn't seem to have problems. He scrubbed and scrubbed, and then pulled me half out of the water so he could reach my back.

"There," he said. "No more."

I opened my eyes, and his face was only a hand span away from mine. I didn't know what to say. I had already said thank you.

Instead, I raised my hand to touch his cheek as he had touched mine. His eyes fluttered shut for less than a second before his grey eyes were on mine again. They seemed dark. More intense. Warm.

"I have some things to attend to. I will send an elf to help you when you've finished." He stood, breaking the contact, and looked at me for a minute, as though debating something. Finally, he dropped quickly and kissed me, softly, in the way a woman kisses her best friend, on the forehead. Then he left, and I had only my thoughts for company.

.

.

That night, I went to bed frightened, a thousand questions trolling through my mind like a patchwork of memories I couldn't forget. What if I hadn't killed that man? Would I have gotten out of there alive, with my life and my moral dignity intact?

Who were they? Would they come back? What if by letting the Bulstrode live, I had opened myself up for more chances for them to get me? What then?

I didn't wonder why they had taken me. I was already fairly sure I knew. They came after me because I was researching something that scared them. Something that might bring about a change that they didn't want and didn't feel they needed. And did they really need the change? Maybe not. Purebloods were comfortable enough, but what about the rest of us?

The less fortunate, the broken and beaten-down lower class, the Mudbloods, and, to a lesser extent, the Half-bloods. Who cared for them? Did they need change? I thought so. I knew so. But I couldn't convince anyone else, even as Lady Malfoy, without endangering my status as a safe, grounded English citizen, under the web of the Ministry of Magic. I couldn't save anyone if I was kidnapped. If I was tossed from society. If I my status was threatened. And wasn't that what the kidnappers had said? Something about the Malfoy status slipping?

Abraxas was confident that the Malfoy status would withstand the tests of time; that they (we) would remain the influential, powerful and rich family that ruled, either officially or subtly, forever. But now I wondered if perhaps the power was slipping. Who would take our place? Who then, without levelheaded people at the helm, would guide and steer the nation to safety in times of trouble.

It was troubling, and I had difficulty falling asleep.

I didn't know if I had been born for anything like this. This sort of pressure had come with the war, but hadn't entirely left. I didn't even know if I was a kind and just enough person anymore to handle it properly. What if I failed?

After another hour of staring at the roof of my canopy, I swung my legs over the side of my bed and summoned my slippers, slid my arms into my nightgown sleeves, and grabbed the candle on my way out.

I padded over to Draco's room and saw a light flickering out from under the bottom of his door. I knocked gently and heard muffled footsteps, and then the door opened, his pale face peeking through the door.

"Hermione," he said, surprised. "What's wrong?" He opened the door the rest of the way and I saw that he had been writing at his desk, a twin to mine. "Hermione?" He was dressed in a loose, half buttoned shirt and a pair of fitted trousers, his hair tousled. His skin glowed gold in the candlelight, and his hair burned yellow. "Hermione..."

I took a breath. "I want some lessons."

"Lessons? For what?" His brows drew across his forehead.

"For what Purebloods learn as children. I want to learn etiquette. Dancing. That sort of thing. I don't – I don't want to embarrass the family."

"I see," he said, and he dropped his hand from the door and rubbed his neck. "It's a bit late for you to be learning all of this. There aren't too many more events this season... And I thought you wanted to have a quiet year without answering any invitations?"

"I do, for now. But I'm going to have to step out at some point – meet people, women, garden parties... It would be prudent for me to have a basic knowledge of the expectations I will be expected to meet. It would be wise."

He nodded. "Alright. I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you," I said. I turned to leave.

He touched my arm, stopping me. "Wait," he said, softly. I turned. "Are you sure you're alright? After, you know, today? And everything?"

"I'm fine," I told him. He didn't look convinced.

"Are you sure? It's – you don't have to talk about it, but I saw the pensieve... and..."

Ah, the pensieve. The change. The murder.

"I – um -"

"Listen, Hermione, I know – what it's like... To be in a situation where all you can think about is surviving. I've been there. When The Dark Lord was using the Manor, and there were Death Eaters everywhere... Sometimes I felt like I'd been kidnapped and held in my own home. The intrusiveness. The way I wasn't welcome anymore. I was desperate, and then during the battle, I felt like I finally had a chance to fight for my freedom... For my family's freedom. I know what it's like to kill someone to ensure your own freedom. I remember feeling guilty. Sometimes I still do." His hand tightened on my arm and he looked deep into me. "Just know – they chose their own side. You chose yours. Life is all about ingratiating yourself in the side that will enable your survival. Maybe in another time we might not have had to choose sides, but we're here and now, with _this _world that we've been left with, and this is what we have to work with."

Perhaps it was a sign of how much I had been twisted and broken by the War that I found myself agreeing. Maybe life wasn't _only _about sides. But I could understand. I knew that we were still fighting. The war might have finished when Harry killed Voldemort, but there was still everything to fight for and everything to lose. We weren't finished yet. I wasn't finished yet.

And maybe I never would be.

But what he said made sense. I was on the side I believed would triumph, not because I wanted to come out unscathed and on the side that won, but because I truly believed in equality. I would fight for it.

Maybe that's just who I was. Who I am. I can live with that.

I covered his hand on my arm and squeezed. If he was Harry I might have given him a hug. But this wasn't Harry. Draco was my husband, but I hardly knew him. Instead, I lifted my other hand to his cheek and ran my thumb as softly as I could across his cheekbone. "Thank you," I said. He nodded in my hand.

"You're my wife," he said. I understood.

He might not be my friend; he might not even like me. But he had made a vow and he was a man of principle. He'd promised to protect and cherish me. Even if he couldn't do one due to inability, he would protect me to his dying day. I ran my thumb again across his skin and dropped my hand.

"And you're my husband."

He nodded again.

So he was.


	5. Explore

**Blood and Connection**

**Chapter Five**

_I stare at the hot tea I hold in my hands as if it is some sort of savior. If I look at it hard enough, with enough longing, perhaps it will suck me up and keep me tucked away inside of it, and then I won't have to endure any more of... this. No more of the anger, accusations, or the fury. The unsubtle hints at my new found role as a whore, a slut, which are thick in the air but unsaid, even though we all of us know very well that I am the last person in the room to deserve such a title._

_But anger, I have learned, and come to appreciate in the last half hour, changes people. Friends shout things that they may or may not regret later. Brothers and sisters begin to feel the vestiges of hatred in their chests. Lovers become enemies. I wanted none of this._

_And so I stare at my tea, allowing the hot steam to waft into my nostrils and clear my throat, which is tightly constricted with varying emotions I don't really care to identify. It is mint, and the herb tingles my skin and leaves a thin film of condensation on my forehead and cheeks. I pray that the others will become so distracted with their anger at each other that they will forget about me, why we are here, and then I can slip out unnoticed. _

_Harry though, is not like Ginny and Ron, and he doesn't allow irrational upset to cloud his vision; and so he turns to me and brings the conversation back to what it was supposed to be, and Ron and Ginny follow suit. Molly Weasley, who is trying very hard not to intervene, is hovering in the corner across the living room with her arms folded and a stormy expression on her usually loving face. She hasn't forgiven me yet for breaking up with Ron, even though I suspect she knew the relationship was never going to work. She is trying very hard not to scream at me as well, to call me a traitor, a bitch, a plethora of other nasty names that are on the tip of her quick tongue. I don't care much, anymore. I've heard it all by now. Every plea. Every attempt at persuasion, needling, desperation. Outright demands. But there isn't anything I can do._

_It's out of my hands._

"_Hermione," Harry says, striving for politeness. He almost sounds normal; pleasant, if it weren't for the tang of bitterness that is almost undetectable in his tone. _

_I look up at him, where he stands over me, his posture dominant. He probably doesn't even know that he looks like an bossy Alpha Male; but I do. "Harry," I say, and suddenly I feel very, very tired. "We've been through it all already. And I've told you, several times, I _can not _get out of this. This is not like Hogwarts rules, Harry, this is the law. They are legally bound to deport me if I don't get married. Malfoy needs a wife. I need a husband. It's a perfect arrangement, and I would be a fool not to exploit the situation." _

"_Marry me!" he exclaims, the words ripped from his lips in exasperation._

"_I can't. I've explained it to you before!" _

"_Explain it again!" Ron marches up behind Harry and glares at me, the fiercest, ugliest mask of anger I have ever seen him wear plastered across his usually gentle face. I stand as well, and refuse to feel intimidated. I say each word slowly, enunciating every syllable._

"_Because you are not powerful enough to keep me here. You are Harry Potter, I know, but I am Hermione Granger. If war-hero status were going to save me, don't you think my own would have sufficed by now? They want me gone. They care nothing for what you or I have done. You are not powerful enough to keep me here!"_

"_But all you need is to get married and they can't touch you! You would be safe with either of us!"_

"_You aren't listening to me," I snap. "Marriage isn't enough to entirely save me. They. Want. Me. Gone! They _will_find a way to change the law, or create a loophole, or something, anything! The only thing that can save me entirely is power, money, and status, do you understand? The Malfoy family has always had a controlling interest in the Ministry. If I marry into the family, nothing will get rid of me, unless the Malfoys are removed from power. But the Ministry can't remove the Malfoys, because if they did, the entire power structure would collapse. Don't you see? It's the only way!"_

_Harry still looks like he's trying to find a way to argue with me. Ron still has the ugly shade of hatred on his face. He will likely never forgive me. Not only did I break up with him, but I am marrying his family's greatest nemesis. But, surprising me, and everyone else in the room, it is Ginny, the one with the most to hate about the Malfoys, who steps over to my side first._

"_Hermione, all I want is for you to be safe. If marrying Malfoy is what it takes, then so be it." Her pale face is set with determination. I try not to let the hot stinging behind my eyes turn into grateful tears. I move to hug her, and she squeezes me tightly. _

"_Thank you," I whisper into her hair. She hugs me tighter. Over her shoulder I see Ron turn and stomp off, out of the room. I pull away from Ginny and she fixes me with a serious stare._

"_I don't know the specifics of what you're doing, Hermione, but I realize it must be something big to get you in such trouble like this. Just so you know," She carefully avoids looking at Harry or her mother, "I'm here if you need me. I might be a blood-traitor, but by rights, I have access to records and other things you might need. Tell me if you need anything, alright? And be safe."_

"_Thank you," I say again. "And I will."_

_Harry grumbles into his hands, rubbing his eyes. Finally, he sighs. "Alright. I see I have nothing else to convince you with." He looks at me. "You'd better tell that fiance of yours, though, I'm going to be checking up on you every day."_

"_You may not come every day. Once a week." I fold my arms, but my relief is so great that the shouting is over that my heart isn't really in it._

"_Three days a week." His brows lower into his sternest look. _

"_Once." _

"_Two."_

"_None." I tilt my face up into a haughty, patronizing position. _

"_Alright, fine. Once." He growls at me and grabs Ginny's hand. "You'd better be careful, Hermione. I mean it."_

"_I know. I will." As best I can._

_***_

The next morning, I was woken by the sound of evenly spaced knocks on my door. I rolled out of bed as gracefully as I could and picked my nightgown up from the floor, where I had left it the night before. Whoever it was knocked again, impatiently. "Hermione?"

"I'm coming!"

I stuffed my arms into the sleeves and quickly looked down to be sure I was properly covered. I opened the door, to find Abraxas, with Draco firmly in tow behind him, with his fist raised to knock again. He dropped his hand and inclined his head in greeting. Behind him, Draco did the same.

"Hermione, we've watched the pensieve." I blinked. "We need to speak with you."

"Of course," I said. "Come in." I led them over to the small sitting area by the fireplace and conjured a third chair for Abraxas, dropping it beside Draco's. I then regretted this decision, because it then appeared like I was facing the inquisition. "What can I help you with," I asked, ignoring the discomfort. Draco spoke first.

"You left the first man alive," he said. I nodded.

"Yes?"

"Well, now he knows you've seen him. Neither Grandfather nor I recognized him fully, but he did look somewhat familiar – we can't place his face, though. But if _you_know what he looks like, he or someone else might come after you. And now they know you're an Animagus; if they attack you again, they _will_ take precautions against you."

My only thought had been escape. I should have stayed and questioned him there. I should have changed back and bound him, and then forced him to tell me who he was and who had sent him. My heart sank like a rock as I realized that I wasn't safe. But all was not lost. I hadn't lived through a war for nothing.

"I left him alive so that I could find out who he was," I said. As I said the words, I realized that I might have a way of tracking him. "We need to go back to the place they held me. I can find him."

Abraxas's eyes rose to a comical height on his forehead. "How do you propose to do that, girl?"

"By using the same basic principle the Ministry uses to track underage magic. If he's still there, there will be no need. But if not, he will have had to clean up the body somehow, and I'm fairly sure he would have needed to use magic to do so. I just need to track his signature."

"You know how to do this?" Abraxas asked. I realized he was on his way to being astonished.

"I think so."

"I must say, Hermione, I am impressed," Abraxas said. I tried not to acknowledge the familiar prickle of pride in my chest. "Well, if you think you can do this, I see no point in not exploring every option. When can you be ready?"

"Five minutes," I said. All I needed to do was brush my teeth, stuff my hair into a serviceable bun, and pull on some clothes. "Also, even if it might be a stretch, it is possible that the perpetrator needed immediate medical attention. I don't know if he was desperate enough for St. Mungo's, but I am sure that he will have a fairly bad infection if he does not treat his wounds soon. It was dirty there, and I wouldn't be surprised if particles from the floor entered his bloodstream. Weakness would make his condition worse, and I don't know how much longer he was unconscious after I hit him. He must either be in home-care or at the Hospital."

"Good. We will meet you in the Entrance Hall at nine." I nodded and he and Draco took their leave.

I swung my robe off my shoulders and practically ran into my closet. My jaw was still sore from the blow the day before. My wrists were still bruised and chafed. I pulled on the first less-than-ludicrously-expensive robe I could find, a simply cut fabric that could have been a brewing robe if it werent for the obviously rich, heavy count fabric. It had slim sleeves and the bodice was fitted but not restricting, and I figured it would suit the tasks for the day. I would be able to perform the advanced magic I would be required to do with minimum disruption or interference and I was adequately stylish enough to stave off awkward questions for Draco should it be discovered that his new wife was a slob.

I brushed my hair into a sloppy knot at the back of my head and checked in the mirror that there was no large chunk of it not included, and, satisfied, I tucked my wand into my sleeve pocket and made my way to join the two Malfoys.

We Apparated to the rooftop, for both reasons of safety and for the simple fact that I had Disapparated from there, and so I could accurately lead us back without difficulty. With my arm tucked solidly in the crook of Abraxas's elbow and my hand held firmly in Draco's, I visualized the gravel covered roof and the outcropping that led to into the building and pushed us there. We landed an instant later and both men hastily let me go and pulled their wands from their sleeves. I too wrapped my fingers around the handle of my own wand and drew it from its pocket, holding it tightly in front of me. I pointed with it towards the window of the room where I had been held, and Draco stepped closer. He muttered something and a flare of light shot into the room. When nothing happened, he turned back to me.

"There's no one there," he said. I went to stand beside him, nodding. "You jumped that far?" he asked, after peering over the edge of the building. His surprise made itself evident in the faint, barely-there lines in his skin. I nodded. It seemed like a much greater distance now that I was in my regular form, looking at the vast space between myself and the window and knowing that I would never be able to jump so far. Not even half the way. If I hadn't had his form for myself, the form of the predatorial cat with so many advantages, I might have died. I silently thanked him for not taking the Animagus form of a ferret, which we, Harry and Ron and I, had jokingly guessed it might be for years. He seemed to know the direction of my thoughts and he reached over to touch the back of my arm reassuringly. I felt oddly comforted by the action.

"Well," Abraxas said after another moment of peering around and studying the layout of the area, "No need to linger. Let us move forward, shall we?" I agreed, and we each Apparated into the room.

It was dark, dusty, but the smell was the same, though slightly less concentrated than it had been as when I'd left it as the Jaguar. The smell of musk and mould was still prevalent, but there was the new addition of tangy blood; metallic and sharp in the air.

But, there was no body. And no blood.

Where Thomas had died, his vital organs compromised to the point of failure, there was a the imprint of his body, and the marks of the struggle leading to it in the dust, but no blood. I could follow my own footprints backwards to the origin, where I had been seated and tied, and watch as my prints turn from paws to feet. On the other side of the chair, which sat alone in the room, still, there is the scuffed marks of the Bulstrode's body. But the body is not there.

"So he escaped," I said. I shouldn't have been, but I was relieved by this. I wouldn't have to look at the work of my own hands, or paws as it may have been. I wouldn't be faced with the aftermath of murder. The bodies. Or body.

"Did he survive, then?" Draco asked. He was staring around the room with an expression I didn't recognize in him. Was it anger? Cold disinterest? Annoyance? Since school he had learned how to control his facial expression, if not his emotions. It was no longer possible to determine precisely what he was thinking simply from the shape created by the sharp creases in his face when he snarled or sneered.

"Hermione?" Abraxas nudged me. I stepped further into the room and sighed. So it was, then, I would need to put to use the magic which to me had so far only been learned in theory. After all, I had never before had cause to use it.

"Alright," I said. "What I am going to attempt is somewhat similar to what Voldemort used in the War, both to track his followers and, also, when he put a curse on his own name so as to find those who dared speak it out loud. It's a variation of a tracking spell that used to be used by hunters and Bounty hunters during the Witch trials. It's more similar, however, to the magic used by the Ministry to track under-age magic."

Abraxas nodded. "I see." he said. "And where did you learn to do this?"

"I didn't." I turned to look at him. His eyebrows shot up. "I read about it, though, and I am fairly certain that I understood the premise well enough that I should be able to perform the spell."

He nodded, but looked doubtful. I wondered, wryly, where his faith in me had gone. I turned back to the room.

First, I needed to perform a diagnostic spell on the environment to discover the very general types of magic which had been used. Charms, Transifigurations, Dark Arts, or even Defensive spells.

"_Venificostendos_," I said, waving my wand. A thin braid of light came beaming from the tip of the wood and the light split into a thousand threads and began spreading around the room, twisting and turning and forming clusters of knots where there had been a performance of magic. Each family of magical property was a different color. Where we had Apparated in from the window was home to three thick tangled webs of pulsing red threads, and the place where I had transformed into a Jaguar the day before held a tight knot of blue, for Transfiguration.

I muttered a stasis charm and lowered my wand. The threads of light stayed where they were. Both men were watching me avidly, and Abraxas looked particularily interested. I ignored them as best I could and continued on. I first went to the place where I knew there had to have been a great lot of blood and knelt down. There was a shimmering patch of hot yellow threads, which signified that there had been either a single powerful charm or many smaller ones performed. I nudged the threads with the tip of my wand and whispered "_Revelios_," and then the threads separated into an organized stream of hair-like strands. I organized them by the shade of yellow, and bound each shade group into a bundle. Each bundle signified a separately performed charm. There were six of them. Now came the more difficult part.

"Each of these is a charm," I told the two men, who were quite obviously curious but wouldn't ask, either because they didn't want to interrupt or because they didn't want to seem stupid.

I pulled the darkest bundle towards me and muttered another diagnostic spell. The threads unattached themselves and became cursive squiggles in the air that spelled out the charm. I did the same for the second bundle, and the third, all the way to the sixth. Someone had either failed to perform the charm correctly, or there had been so much blood as to require three, but the first four were simply charms used for the collection of blood. It was a fairly uncomplicated charm; I had used it myself many times when I was working with potions – but it also worked to clean blood from other surfaces. The other two charms were Wingardium Leviosa and a charm I recognized but had never used; a tricky glamour charm, which told me that whoever had cleaned up the mess meant to present the body to another person, for a funeral or informal viewing. Which meant that whoever had kidnapped me, and had cleaned up what I'd left behind, was organized.

Very well organized.

.

.

I continued along through the tangled webs of pulsing magical signatures and pieced together what had happened once I'd gone. I then went back to the point where I'd cast the diagnostic spell to begin with and touched my wand to the frayed end of the thread which went on to split in every direction, and whispered the most difficult part so far; I told the threads to add another color into the mix, an aura of sorts. Slowly, shimmering like a dull bulb flaring into life after a long period of disuse, each knot of magic developed a colored aura around it. Each color represented a different person's magical signature. There were only four. Mine, Thomas's, the Bulstrode's, and another. The witch or wizard who'd been left to clean up the mess. I waved my wand and the threads vanished, but the auras remained, hazy and transparent, floating over the origins of magic. I waved my wand again and all of the auras grouped themselves together and then floated towards me. Then there were four hazy clouds at waist level, waiting for me to perform more diagnostics.

I canceled the two that I wasn't concerned with – mine and Thomas's – and they disappeared.

"These represent two different people. The man I left alive, and whomever it was that came back for them." I thrust my wand into the center of each cloud and they shrunk in on themselves until they were each tightly convulsed beads of bright light. I pulled the one belonging to the Bulstrode towards me first. Once it was at eye-level, I again touched the tip of my wand to it, and said, clearly, "_Ostensum Sator._" The bead flashed hot white and then unfurled itself into a smoky image, charred and smudged in the air. There was the form of a man, and even from the very basic, crude image I knew it was my kidnapper. I pointed my wand: "_Fio Paper_." The image hardened and became a smooth photograph floating in the air. I snatched it down and handed it wordlessly to Draco, who peered at it curiously.

"It doesn't give a name?"

"No," I said, shrugging. "Names can be changed. It shows your true, original form, without glamours or enhancements."

Draco handed it to Abraxas, who pocketed it.

I repeated the process with the second bead.

When I saw the picture, I didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved that I didn't recognize the man. It was a plain enough looking man, in his mid thirties to forties, with sandy brown hair and nondescript brown eyes, and plain, clean-shaven cheeks, with very little to make him stand apart in a crowd. There was no evil lurking in his eyes, and his appearance was, regrettably, forgettable. I could have seen him before a hundred times, and I doubt I would have remembered him. It was possible that I had. Neither Draco nor Abraxas recognized him, and when Abraxas placed the picture with the other one, he sighed.

"That was a good piece of magic you did, Hermione, but I regret to say we've gained nothing from it. We still don't know who he is."

"No," I said, dejected. I was glad I didn't know him, whoever it was, but I started to wish it had been someone whose name I could put to the face so that the whole ordeal might be over sooner. "Are you sure he isn't some Pureblood delegate or something? Perhaps you've seen him at a party, or in the War, or in the Wiznagemot?"

"I am sorry, Hermione, but I've never seen this man in my life." Abraxas smiled apologetically.

"But didn't you say that it shows the casters true self?" asked Draco.

"Yes..."

"Well, then it's possible that we do know him, but he might usually wear a glamour or make use of the Polyjuice."

I nodded slowly. "Yes, that's possible, but it still doesn't help us, for now, at least. But all is not lost. The magical signature is contained within those pictures, however faintly. I am not a tracker, by any stretch of the imagination, but I know who might be able to help." I waved my wand and the room returned to normal, and all visible signs of magic were erased. We Apparated back to the manor.

.

.

After dinner, Draco came to see me.

"I have made good on your request. An etiquette instructor will be here first thing in the morning, at nine o'clock, to begin your first lesson. She insists that you dress as if she were an esteemed guest." He disappeared into my closet and, when he returned, he was holding long, elegant, peach colored dress robes. "I suggest you wear these. These are day-robes, used for informal meetings. They are casual enough for an afternoon tea, but just formal enough to cement your status as a Lady of the Manor." He laid them at the foot of my bed. I nodded and touched the hem of the sleeve, feeling the thick velvet. "And you should try to tame your hair," he added. "Wear it up. Sleekeasy isn't necessary for lessons but it shouldn't hang in your face. She wants to see your expressions."

I nodded again and saw myself in the mirror over his shoulder. My coloring contrasted with his, his blonde hair a beacon of light in front of my own dark mass of curls. My skin, next to his, seemed darker as well – olive toned, even and tanned, even though I knew I was relatively pale on the whole. It seemed unfair that his skin should be so milky, pearlescent, gleaming white, while I had to deal with a ruddy complexion and skin issues every day.

"Okay," I said, finally, returning my gaze to rest on his face. "Do I need to bring anything? Where will this meeting take place?"

"In the Rose Room. It's my mother's old tea parlour, but she has since claimed a different room and no longer makes use of it. The room is yours now. When you host, you will do so there. A House Elf will show you the way in the morning."

He made his way towards the door. "And no," he added, "You need bring only yourself."

"Will you be there?" I asked, just before he left.

"No. You will do well, Hermione, as you always do."

And he left, leaving me reeling in the wake of his compliment.

.

I puttered around my lab for an hour or so, feeling guilty, having not accomplished anything of great value that day. I organized more ingredients and arranged the storeroom the way I wanted it, with the dry items on the top shelves and the liquids neatly labeled and set near the floor, where it was cooler. I checked on the potion I had begun the day before, added the Romulian Dragon Liver, and prepared the next ingredients. I sliced the Bulls Tongue and laid the strips neatly on a cutting board.

On the corner of the table, where I'd left them two days earlier, I saw the darkly glimmering shimmer of blood in the three vials. I pulled them towards me and held one up to the light. The name Draco Malfoy appeared like a silouhette against the viscous red, an apparition. I turned it over in my fingers and watched the tiny bubbles of released gas float from one side to the other.

It was strange, staring at the blood, knowing that it was this little studied but highly prized substance that had caused an entire war. This material had been the cause of the hundred deaths, murders, in the second war, the stolen lives of so many of my classmates. Fred Weasley. Colin Creevey. Remus Lupin. Nymphadora Tonks. All because Draco Malfoy's blood was not like mine.

And yet, when I held them up, side by side, with the names facing away from me, I could see no differences.

Nothing.

Both held the same swirling redness, the same reminder of something dark, something chaotic and not entirely quantifiable. Muggles had long since begun and finished a majority of their analysis of blood and DNA and the human genome – so blood was not a complete unknown. But there was still something so dangerous about it, the look of it, something deceptive. Not entirely honest. Like something was lurking behind the murky darkness and waiting to snap.

I put the vials back down and folded my hands under my chin.

I wanted so badly to figure it all out, and the waiting was killing me. Potion making, though, is a science, an art form, and it is both unaware and unconcerned with the whims of the scientist. Like Chemistry, Biology, or Physics, or any of the other great sciences in the Muggle world, I was very much an observer. I wasn't forcing things to happen.

Because that isn't how a good experiment works.

Science doesn't work that way. And even though in the Magical world it might be largely up to the researcher to determine whether a particular avenue was closed or not to questioning, I had been raised as a Muggle and taught as a Muggle. Scientific experiments, to my mind, were only viable when each possibility was carefully documented, experimented upon, and closed. Science did not aim to prove a theory, it aimed to disprove it; and only once a theory was proven to be unshakable would it stand the tests of time.

I wasn't entirely sure what my theory was, at that point. I was still in the beginning stages, testing, planning, throwing ideas around in my head. I didn't want to write a theory down only to be commited to it. I wanted to know everything first.

No matter what the cost.


	6. Heat

**Blood and Connection**

**Chapter Six**

_I am trying not to cry. Five angry, belligerently oppressive faces are looming above me, patronizing and insincere in their apology._

"_I'm sorry, Miss Granger, but there is simply _nothing we can do..."

_Their words echo over and over, ringing through my skull like the blow of a fog horn. My ears tingle uncomfortably. I struggle for breath._

"_You will be escorted out of the country on July the 25th, by three Aurors, and your wand will be snapped at the border between English and French territory."_

_The 25th of July... So little time!_

_And then, miraculously, like a shock of color in a sea of blackness, I realize that these men don't _know_. They are still in the past, stuck underground in the realm of quiet and undisturbed anonymity. They have none of them read a newspaper, or listened to the radio, in years, to preserve their unbiased lack of outer worldy influence – officially, of course. They do recieve 'tidbits' of information from 'caring', powerful politicians who seek to gain their own desired ends, every now and then. But no Pureblood politician would dare tell the Supreme Senators of my new betrothal, not when there is any chance of my deportation being halted. They don't want to risk the chance that the Supremes will heed the law. The laws they set and nurture. Suddenly, I find my voice. It clatters through the empty chambers, reassuring, strong._

"_Wait," I say. I clear my throat. "I have new information."_

"_We are closed to begging," says the short and ugly one, rudely. He sneers at me with limpid, watery eyes and his fleshy mouth drawn into a harsh, exaggerated line from cheek to cheek. As if I would beg._

"_No – you misunderstand. I'm engaged." Only one of them shows any emotion at this – a start of shock, a widening of his eyes and a slight intake of breath. "You can't deport me... Legally, as soon as the wedding is complete, I am tied forever to British soil."_

"_En – engaged you say?" Exclaims the eldest. He looks like Aberforth Dumbledore. He peers down at me through the thick spectacles perched on his nose. The lines of his face contain none of Aberforths kindness."When is this wedding to take place?"_

_Draco had just decided yesterday. June 15. I tell them so._

_The ugly one slammed his hand on the table and snarled at me."Young Lady, we do not have time for your games. Do you understand the charges laid against you? You have been accused of Master Theft, Spreading Malicious Falsehoods, and with Treason! The Ministry has asked us to punish you most severely! We are saving you from Azkaban! Do not force us to change our minds with this silly prevarication!"_

"_Sirs, truly, I understand," I say, annoyed. "But under Bill 743 and the Clause 479 of the Class of Morgaine and Brethren, I legally belong to my husband and his will supercedes that of the authority of the Ministry, and, as such, only he may decided to deport me from England. This is the _law_."_

"_My dear Miss Granger, I think I know the law a fair bit better than-" His brother, who had summoned the original Book of Morgaine and Brethren, taps his shoulder and he breaks off his sentence. He glances over the book and looks up, flustered but triumphant none-the-less. "This code passed out of use centuries ago," he tells me. His eyes glitter with malice. I allow myself a small smirk for having, as usual, out-researched the competition._

"_Actually, I beg to differ, with respect. Tiberius Malfoy III brought the law back into use in 1875 so that he might have legal recourse for beating and keeping Lucretia Malfoy in his home without disturbance from the Ministry. He didn't want her running off to the Parkinsons and crying for help."_

"_It says nothing of this in here-" says the third man. I cut him off._

"_That is because the law was only brought back so far as the Malfoy family was concerned. The law only applies to the Malfoy family and her descendants. The magic of Clause 479 is tied into the Base Stones of Malfoy Manor."_

"_Miss Granger," huffs the old, ugly one impatiently. "I must insist that you cease wasting our time. By your own admission, this law does not apply to you-"_

_His neighbor to the right interrupts him. "Miss Granger," he asks, and as one, the five of them lean forward with identical slowness, "Who exactly is your fiance?"_

_I draw in a breath, and try to keep my annoyingly triumphant grin off my face. "My Fiance is the Ascended Lord Draco Abraxas Apollo Black Malfoy, son of Lucius Tiberius Apollo Malfoy, grandson of Abraxas Tiberius Lucius Leonidas Malfoy III, and the Fifth Descended Duke of Dashbourne and Estates, CEO of Malfaißt Enterprise and all partner and descended companies, and sole heir to Mafloy Family fortunes."_

_To myself, I add, _Estimated Net Worth: 100 Million Galleons, and rising.

"_But, you're a-"_

"_Yes. A Mudblood. I _am_ a Mudblood." How they had underestimated me. How they were now kicking themselves, feeling bested. I smile. By a mudblood, no less._

"_But, how -"_

"_But Gentelmen," I interrupt again. "Isn't that why we're here?"_

_And it is._

Because I am a Mudblood.

***

I found the Rose Room with relatively little trouble, and sat down as lightly as I could in the most comfortable chair, a primly trimmed chaise with a delicate floral pattern. I crossed my ankles as I had seen Narcissa do consistently and tucked them underneath the seat, below my knees. It was uncomfortable and gravity tried to pry my knees apart, and I had to physically concentrate on holding the position, as well as holding my back straight and my shoulders back. I wondered what I would be expected to do with my hands, and ended up folding them softly in my lap. I had seen a picture of the Queen sitting in much the same position once, and I felt relatively certain that I would not offend unnecessarily. I picked through my memories and gathered all of the tidbits I could remember about manners and ettiquitte, from novels and regency era accounts of society that I had read as a teenager, when I had been fascinated with history and the Aristocracy. Never had I dreamed I might make use of the information as a member of the Upper Class myself, simply reading for the enjoyment and satiation of my curiosity.

I had been sitting there for ten minutes or so, and my back was beginning to ache and throb in the regions of my shoulders and the area of my spine just above my hips, when a small House Elf popped in front of me, and with a high, clear voice, announced the arrival of my guest.

I accepted the entrance of the guest and stood to greet her when she walked through the door.

My first impression was that the woman must be a relative, distant or no, of Narcissa. Her cool blonde hair was swept into a tight and menacing chignon in the back of her head, and her frosty green eyes bore into mine with thinly veiled interest and even less well hidden scrutiny. Her eyes raked up my body twice before she reached me, taking in my appearance from the thin slippers I wore on my feet to the simple clasp necklace around my neck, a gift from my mother in happier times, and finally, to my hair.

I had done as Draco had bade me to do, and swept my hair into a controlled knot, but some of my hair around my temples and forehead had escaped, and under her gaze, I could feel the coiled strands brush against my skin. I felt undressed.

"Hello," I said finally, determined not to feel cowed. "Please, have a seat," I invited, motioning to the seat opposite mine. The woman looked at me coldly for another moment, making no move to seat herself, before pressing her lips together in a firm manner reminiscent of Professor McGonagall. Then she began to speak.

"First, when one is recieving an unfamiliar guest into her home, introductions must be made and accepted before seats are to be taken. The social heirarchy must be clearly and unequivocally established before either party is seated in order to settle the further rules of ettiquitte. Second, when this unfamiliar guest is brought into your home, as the hostess, you are not to stand. Standing requires movement, and as the hostess, you are required to make effort only to cement your status into the circle. Repositioning yourself to accomodate a guest precludes the notion that you believe yourself inferior in rank. As you rank higher than me, and indeed, higher than most women by default of your marriage, excepting of course, equal ranked matrons and women with a rank of no less than one beneath you who are ten years or more older than yourself, you will remain seated next time you intercept my presence. The only time you must stand is upon the entrance of your husband, father-in-law, or another high ranking male member of your husbands family, as a sign of respect. Thirdly, flyaway hair is for romanctic novels only, Lady Malfoy, and for our next meeting, I expect you to tame your coiffure. It is rude to look unkempt in the presence of a guest."

I stared at her, my cheeks heating with embarassment of being so thoroughly called-out. "Well," I said, as crisply as I was able, "That is why I have hired you." I sat down into my rigid position and folded my hands once again in my lap. With a look of annoyance, the woman sat as well, sinking uncomfortably into her chair. I recognized at once that the chair was far too comfortable and cozy, and she was far more suited to a rigid, hardbacked chair with little to no cushioning. With relish, I began to dream up the hardest, most uncomfortable chair I could think of for her use in the next meeting.

"Indeed," she said coldly. "I am Aria Blydon. I am your sixth cousin from the Black family line, and I rank three below you as the daughter of a Marquis. You will refer to me as Miss Blydon unless I give you leave to do otherwise, as I shall refer to you only as Lady Malfoy, except if you bid me to call you by your given name, but even then only in the privacy of an individual meeting and never in public. You will find, Lady Malfoy, that rank is everything, and without it, you have nothing but your husband. You will never be ostracized, but you will have no power. And I believe you especially will understand this when I tell you: without power, you are useless. Blood and connections are the only two paving stones for a woman in this society. You come from a lower-class upbringing and so cannot possibly understand the experiences which make these rules hold." She cleared her throat delicately before continuing.

"You will be instructed not only in basic ettiquitte, but in the mastery of social discourse and the methodology of finding your way around the social structure of Pureblood Society. Etiquitte is something a child can master by the age of three, Lady Malfoy. But few women posess the inner aptitude for the mastery of the societal ladder. I have seen your record and I am not fooled by your relatively innocent exterior. You fancy yourself a revolutionary. You have plebian methods and very little knowledge about that which you seek to change. I have my doubts that you will truly be able to learn much of anything, set in your ways as you are." She leaned forward, and burning though my cheeks were at her unflattering description of my character and her blase dismissal about my work, I found myself leaning forward too. Because as much as she sounded like an anti-feminist, I could sense the burning fire between the lines she spoke. Social discourse, mastery of the ladder... All of this was necessary for me to learn in order to truly survive in this new world I had been so unceremonially tossed into, and it would come very useful in the future when I would need to use powers of manipulation to gain access to previously inaccessible things I might need.

"You might be a warrior, Lady Malfoy. I know what you have done. But this is not the War of the Dark Lord, and nor is it the Battle of Hogwarts. You have just entered an entirely different battlefield." And as soon as the spark had flared in her eyes, it was replaced by the cool frostiness that had been there when she had entered. I straightened again, recognizing her words for truth.

"I understand," I said. She simply watched me carefully for a few seconds before the slightest trace of a sneer crossed her features.

"We'll see." She touched a finger delicately to her left eye and dabbed gently at a speck of dust or makeup that had lodged itself in her lid. "Ring for tea, if you please."

I held up my left hand as Draco had showed me and flicked my wrist softly at the ground, focussing on calling a House Elf to my side. It worked, and the same small Elf appeared rapidly. "Yes, Lady?"

"Please bring us a tray for tea. Thank you." I flicked my wrist again as the Elf nodded and she disappeared. Aria – Miss Blydon – watched me intensely, her eyes following every movement, from intake of breath to the fidget of my right hand in my lap. I felt distinctly uncomfortable in the silence until the elf arrived with the tea. He set the tray silently on the short table in front of Miss Blydon and disappeared. I reached a hand forward to lift the silver teapot, but Miss Blydon arrested me with her sneering voice.

"As much as it would amuse me to see you serve me when it is I who should be serving you, you will do no such thing. Please think about what I have told you for a moment, Lady Malfoy. You make no moves to secure my comfort. I am the one who serves you." The word 'serve' dripped from her tongue like acid, burning my ears with distaste. I did not want to be served, and she did not want to serve me, and thus the both of us would hate our roles for the forseeable future. For the first time in possibly my whole life, I found something I did not want to learn.

I did not want to be a Pureblood.

But her sharp eyes were challenging even in their disgust for my pride, and I could never resist a blatant challenge. It was the reason I had done so well in school. The reason I had never failed a test. Because my very presense was a challenge, in Hogwarts, to the self-righteous snobbery of the upper echelons of society, and they challenged me right back, smirking behind their hands at my ineptness. After I was sorted, I never failed again.

And I wasn't bloody well going to start now. The glove had been thrown down.

Afterall, if Miss Bitch-Blydon could do it, so could I.

***

Three hours later, I was regretting taking it quite so seriously, and wondering that my back could possibly be in so much pain simply from sitting and learning to simper. The imperious expression I'd had to adopt to please Miss Blydon was stuck to my cheeks, and the rudeness I had eschewed so that I might escape another snide comment was starting to tingle my throat. I had never been the sort of back-handed bitch before... This was Lavender and Pavarti territory. But it had been so _easy. _And that was frightening.

Suddenly fatigued, I forced myself to my lab and pulled out my notebook. I needed to use my brain for something worthwhile or my head was going to explode. And then, perhaps, I might be able to visit a friend. Whatever friend I had left. Which meant Ginny.

God, I was tired.

I made myself concentrate and flipped to a new page, pulling out my favorite quill and a bottle of ink. I headlined the page neatly and began to pen in the basic points.

_Pureblood_

_No muggle ancestors or relations as far as can be determined_

_Requires conscious planning to continue Pure bloodlines_

_Breeding out_

_Impossible to keep up without interbreeding – do muggle health problems apply? _

_Rsrch:Mental health damage/Squib rate/Low Magical Power/Rate of deformity?_

_Intense focus on Aristocracy – Parallels to Muggle England?_

_Half-Blood_

_At least one muggle grandparent_

_Wider breeding population, little to no concern for bloodlines_

_Percentage increasing?_

_Average magical power?_

_Rsrch: Rate of deformity/Squib Children/Magical Power/Mental Stability_

_Muggle-Born_

_Born to two muggle parents_

_Average Magical Power?_

_Traditions – similarity/difference to magical world, mental health affectation_

_Percentage of population?_

_Rsrch: Average life (career, school, grades, etc.)/Average Magical Power?/Ability to master higher magics_

_Must finally debunk the myth that muggleborns steal Pureblood magic. Use Genetics._

Pausing, I underlined Genetics again. And again.

And then I pulled out my muggle textbook which dealt with genetics. I had bought it from a muggle bookstore over a year ago whilst shopping with my mother. It was very basic, and after flipping through it, I realized I was either going to have to ask for more expert advice or find a way to smuggle a computer into the Manor and figure out how to make it work without shorting the electricity with an overloard of magical energy.

I paused again. _Energy._

I added another page and wrote a new heading.

_Energy_

_What is magic really made of? Electricity? What sort of energy? _

_How do muggleborns learn to tap into energy source? _

_External vs. Internal source?_

_Is energy limitless, or is there only so much to go around – which leads to..._

_Is there a firm number of magical beings the earth can hold?_

I realized I had just stumbled upon a dangerous question. If there was only so much magic to go around, Purebloods might be somewhat right in stating that a muggleborn was stealing magic from a Pureblood, because in a standard society with set numbers, what wasn't a Pureblood would have to be a Muggleborn. And while the Purebloods were busy interbreeding and going extinct, more and more magic would be diverted to muggle babies. But I wasn't so sure this hypothesis had any ground. I had always thought that magic was created within the person, not tied to the earth. I would have to find some way to find out.

I thought about that for a while. I couldn't think of any way to test that unless I had a large and cumbersome piece of muggle machinery. And perhaps it would be interesting to use muggle lab equipment to experiment with viewing what happened in the brain whilst casting various spells, varying in strength, intensity, and longevity. Whether energy had an origin within the subject or if it was drawn from elsewhere, like electricity was diverted through power-lines. I added it as a note.

I worked my way through the first five chapters of the book on Genetics in under an hour. By the time I was cresting on Chapter Six, the Evolution of the Genome, there was a faint knocking on my door. I grunted and Draco allowed himself in.

"Are you busy?" he asked, waiting by the door.

"Not really. I'm just brushing up on my Genetics."

"How did the lesson go?"

I laughed and he looked startled. And wary. "I don't know how you do it. Repressing your opinions is bad enough, but to do so with flair and class and insult everyone within hearing distance all at the same time just to cement your status... It takes so much effort!"

He laughed too, and I was struck by how pleasant the sound was. It was warm and rumbling, like a friendly noise a lion might make in the deep parts of its chest. He pulled up a stool and sat down, resting one arm casually on the table. "The trick is to think of it as a game. Like chess. The whole point is to move your way across the board and outmaneuver your opponents. In Pureblood functions and gatherings I make a point of playing with people, subtly, of course, so they don't notice, but enough that I feel at ease and in control. Otherwise it's just politics, and boring, and it quickly becomes something you dread. But when you turn it into a game -"

"It's fun." I smiled. "I'll try that."

He nodded. "And don't let Miss Blydon get you down. She won't like you, but its not personal. When you married me you usurped her position a bit. She wasn't really the highest ranked, but she was the most correct and has such a forceful personality that she ended up moving her way up and above a few of the girls ranked higher than her simply because no one wanted to challenge her. I don't think she expects you to put up a fight."

"Should I? Fight?"

He grinned wolfishly, looking nearly identical to Abraxas. "My grandfather told you we don't care about scandal as long as we come out on top. It's only been my father that's attempted to have a flawless image. I try to please him, but I'm not above a little bit of challenging the norm, so long as I don't damage the family name. You might want to test the waters first, but I doubt much harm will come to us if you bare your teeth a little bit."

"People already expect me to be uncouth," I pointed out. "The worst I can do is act like they already think I do."

"True. No one will expect you to put up a fight. There is a lot of stereotyping that goes on – obviously – but a good deal of it involves Purebloods being the refined upper class and Muggleborns being like animals, lower than dirt. That's where the phrase Mudblood comes from. It seems fairly redundant to call someone a Mudblood. We all know your blood isn't pure. The term originally meant that someone was unrefined and untrained. You can use that to your advantage."

I leaned forward. I had never heard him talk so much and I wasn't going to discourage him now.

"I don't know much about muggle Aristocracy, but I imagine it's much the same. There are classes and levels within each class. We operate in a somewhat similar fashion, but along the way we've forgotten that we aren't so original. That's your advantage. You have some knowledge about how things work and people will be so stunned to see you navigating society properly they won't even know what hit them if you actually start challenging them on their own ground. And that is exactly what you need to do."

"Challenge them."

"You are a revolutionary, Hermione. I'm not entirely up to speed on your research like my Grandfather, but I know you're planning to change things. Fine. But this is just like any other battle. You have to win support to your side first, before you have any hope of winning. I hesitate to call them pawns, but if you imagine it as a real-life chess game, that's what it ends up being."

I laughed again. "Miss Blydon just told me that even though I was a warrior, I've entered an entirely different battlefield. I suppose it's too much to hope for to ask for a little peace? All this fighting is making me dizzy."

He snorted. "Say what you will, Hermione, but I don't think you will ever settle for peace. You like to change things. Don't stop now." He stood up. "I have a meeting to attend, but that isn't why I came. I need to speak with you about some of the particulars of the wedding."

Sobering, I looked at him sharply, suspicous of his tone. "Has something gone wrong?"

"No." His cheeks turned just a hint pinker and he cleared his throat. "It's about one of the more ah – _intimate _parts of the Marriage Spell itself. More specifically, the consummation part."

"Oh!" I gasped, realizing I had completely forgotten about the compelled consummation. And then I frowned. "Why haven't I felt anything? Shouldn't I be trying to fight off some magic right now?"

Draco had the grace to avert his eyes. "I managed to put a damper on the spell and it will hold until tonight, but the Spell will come back full force, and probably more strongly, as soon as the damper is removed. I didn't want the spell to drive me crazy until I felt more... comfortable."

I felt my lips twitch. He may have put the damper on for entirely self-centered reasons, but I appreciated it. And the fact that he now felt 'comfortable' made me want to laugh at him. Strange how I could almost agree. If I was feeling at home enough to feel relatively safe having a long conversation with him, and even laughing, no less, I supposed I must be comfortable too. And I had the suspicion that if we had slept together earlier, this comfort might not have appeared for a good long while.

"I'm glad," I said finally.

"I will come to your rooms tonight, if that's alright." He cleared his throat again. "I don't wish for this to be awkward. And I am sorry that we don't have more time, but a week is all I could manage. I will do my best to make it as – as.." He couldn't finish. His cheeks were so red now that I took pity on him, while at the same time feeling oddly gratified... and – safe? He must have cared about me at least one small bit, whether just because he was tied to me for all eternity or because he genuinely respected me, I couldn't be sure. But he cared enough to seek ways to provide for my comfort. I was cognizant of this and thankful for his forethought as I stood.

"It's alright," I said, watching him carefully. "I understand that this is a strange situation, and you aren't any more easy with this than I am. But I appreciate your effort in making this situation more -" I stumbled but forced myself to say it - "_Enjoyable_ for both of us. Truly, I thank you." I reached up and kissed his cheek. His skin was hot with his blush beneath my lips. "I will see you tonight."

He nodded, relieved, and left me. The moment he was out the door I felt as though I were fifteen and crushing on Viktor Krum again, and I disolved into a helpless fit of giggles. I laughed until my chest hurt and I had to fight to breath, and tears of mirth streamed down my cheeks. The absurdity of my situation kept me in good spirits through the rest of the day.

***

I was able to keep myself from dwelling on the crudity of the act I would be performing that night, which, when there was little relationship between participants to be had, boiled down to little more than friction between bodies in my mind, until I finally crept back into my bedchamber.

The pull of the compellation spell was starting to peek in my belly. It was unforgiving and slightly painful between my legs, where the majority of the spell was acting. I was reduced to nothing more than a bitch in heat, and it was embarassing and degrading, but I recongized it and the fact that I knew what it was made it slightly more bearable. I was no green girl, innocent to the ways of men, and I recognized the other signs in myself. The tenderness in my breasts and the coiled, intense heat in my lower abdomen, throbbing and unceasing. As I combed out my hair and changed into a thin, easy to slip on (and off) nightdress, I could feel the desire pulsating. My lips felt dry and I saw in the mirror that my pupils were dilated so wide that the brown of my irises all but disappeared.

The room felt too warm, and I opened a window.

At eleven, the door opened, and my husband walked in.

The second my eyes swept over and met his, the desire magnified and became a hundred times more intense. My heart sped up and beat at a pace that should have meant I was having a heart attack. He crossed the room and took my hand.

His skin was feverish against mine. His other hand snared around my waist and pulled me flush against him. I felt his own desire pressing against my belly, hardening as the seconds crept past. He looked in my eyes, holding himself back for a moment, and I nodded. He was asking permission. So I kissed him.

The moment my lips touched his all thought was lost. One hand pulled my face closer to his until teeth collided and lips meshed together, tongue roving everywhere. Hot breath on my face. Shivers down my spine. Intensely amplified sensations of my hair brushing against my shoulders and his fingers on my skin, light and gentle. My own fingers were busy undoing the tie on his robe while his other hand was slipping my straps from my shoulders. Our clothing fell as one to the floor, my dressing gown fluttering beside his heavier bath robe to the ground, whooshing on impact.

My fingernails scraped at his bare back, and his hands roved my body, exploring. Sensations were too numerous and delightful to name.

Frenzied moments later, he lifted me up and carried me to the bed. He snapped his fingers.

And then it was dark.


	7. Dine

**Blood and Connection**

**Chapter Seven**

_I don't know what Draco wants to speak with me about, but there's a niggling in the back of my mind that tells me I probably should. He's about to be my husband, after all, and I should be more prepared. _

_It's surreal how _unreal _this all feels to me. I'm twenty-two years old, and I'm getting married. I can't even process it._

_Marriage has always seemed like such a distant proposition. I've only dated Ron seriously, and god knows that relationship wasn't headed to the altar – a fact I'm still thankful for. Marriage isn't what a girl like me is cut out for. I'm the smart one. I'm the ambitious one. I'm the selfless one. I'm not the pretty, lovable girl who gives it all up for love. I'm, apparently, still not. I'm prickly, obnoxious, and bossy. I stick to my guns through hell and high water, and I don't give a damn about the 'easy way'. But I'm still sacrificing. I'm giving up everything, but not for love. What is wrong with me? Why don't I care more?_

_Draco calls me in and his pretty, brainless receptionist waves me past, eying me up and down with a half-derisive sneer as I go. The news of my impending nuptials as made the rounds, by now, though no formal announcement has been made. But the Supreme Courts are not very well known for actually following their Secrecy Laws. She clearly doesn't approve of the future Lady Malfoy._

"_Granger," Draco says to me as I walk through the door. "Sit down."_

_I do._

"_I needed to discuss something with you."_

_I nod, fold my left knee over my right, and set my bag on the floor. When I'm seated comfortably and looking at him again, he continues._

"_It's about the marriage. There are – or will be, if there aren't already – some rumours about why I'm marrying you. I wanted you to hear it from me, first, so you can adequately deal with them."_

_Interesting, I think. I lean forward and indicate my focus. _

_He clears his throat and appears to be deciding where to begin. When he speaks, there are no pauses or brief spaces or 'umms' or 'uhs'. He speaks perfectly clearly, and I get the impression that he's gone over this quite a few times in his head._

"_I presume," he begins, "that you know a good deal about my father's trial."_

_I nod again. His father's trial is legendary, even only two years after it happened. His father, while escaping Azkaban time, was declared legally incompetent, and every last speck of his estate was passed to his father, Abraxas Malfoy, a discreet but powerful man who had spent the war abroad in France and Germany to avoid the conflict. Abraxas was not enamoured with the Dark Arts, and other than being a tad outspoken and a somewhat eccentric-but-brilliant businessman, he was completely free of scandal. _

"_Right. So my Grandfather controls the estate. Because of my own trial, the estate was bound to Abraxas and legally, can only pass to me if my Grandfather declares me competent. It sounds straightforward, but my Grandfather made some stipulations of his own once the trial had cleared up."_

"_And they weren't made public," I say. "That's why I've not heard of them before, right?"_

"_Yes."_

"_So what were they?"_

"_I'm getting to that," he narrows his eyes, a trace of his customary sneer peeking through his peaceful façade._

"_Sorry."_

"_There are two stipulations. One, I must marry a mud -ggleborn," he catches himself at the last second, "before my twenty-second birthday." This I already know through rumours, and it was how I'd known to blackmail him in the first place. "And two, I must produce an heir, with my Muggleborn wife, before my twenty-sixth birthday."_

_I feel, like ice water dripping on the inside of my skin, the blood draining from my face. This, I had not known .Quickly, I do the sums. I am a year older than he, and I'm twenty-two. He is twenty-one. I have four years to conceive. In five years, I am going to be a mother. _

_For the first time since this stupid marriage is arranged, I truly understand – my freedom is slowly, but surely, slipping away._

_._

_._

The next morning was, surprisingly, not as awkward as I had expected. I had been so worried about what this would do to us – whether we would carry on getting along or if a bad first night would drive a wedge in the middle of our fragile and still young relationship – that I forgot the truth; we were both well-functioning, capable adults with prior relationships, which meant that neither of us were inexperienced enough to take this for something it wasn't. We knew what we were doing, and it was a necessary step in our marriage. Whether or not we wanted to do it so soon was irrelevant. It was necessary, enjoyable, and it was over and done with. There was no need to dwell, and neither of us were the type to make unnecessary comparisons.

And so, I felt comfortable enough to fling back the tangled sheets from my torso and walk naked in the cold morning light to pick my robe up off the floor and tie the sash around my waist with nary a blush. I didn't know if Draco was awake or not, but I was fairly certain that he wouldn't care.

I showered and washed my hair, scrubbed the pertinent areas and towelled myself dry. When I returned to my bedroom, Draco was just sitting up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The sheets fell away from his torso, and I could see quite clearly what about him had been real and what had been influenced by the spell the night before. He had lost the subtle glow which had enveloped him, but he kept his spellbinding whiteness. The corded muscle was still there, but I could see that the muscle covered an angular, sharp body with harsh edges everywhere, and the muscle was not quite enough to bring him from the realms of 'lanky'. He was not overtly thin, but he was certainly built more along the lines of a football player than a rugby player. His face, too, had lost some roundness, and looked much harsher in the morning light than it had in the glow of candlelight. But his face was not angry – rather, it was striking.

He was not beautiful, and he would never be the most handsome man in the room, but he was interesting, and arresting in an enigmatic way. In his own way, he was incredibly appealing; attractive in the basest form of the word.

And truthfully, now that in recent years he had lost his horrible sneer and replaced it with careful guardedness, I was much more willing to respect and admire his appearance as a man worthy of a second-look. As a husband, I supposed I could definitely have done worse even if I'd had a choice.

"Good morning," he said carefully from the bed. He didn't immediately get up. He hid his nakedness with the covers for a moment before, with a small amount of hesitation, he stood and crossed to gather up his own robe from the ground. I tried not to watch, but it was difficult. He walked like he did as a panther; with grace and predatory stillness. There was no excess movement; his limbs moved only to balance and propel himself. I tried to remember if he had moved the same way the night before. He had.

"Good morning," I replied. "Did you sleep well?"

"I did. Your bed is softer than mine."

"Oh." I was on the verge of telling him that he could borrow mine again if he wanted, but I clamped my mouth shut at the last second.

"You've showered already?" he asked. I nodded. "Good. Let's get breakfast."

"You're not going to shower?"

"No," he said.

"Oh," I said again. "Alright then." I debated with myself whether this was grossly unsanitary, or if I didn't actually care that much.

We walked to breakfast together, close but not touching. It was a companionable stroll, and it almost felt as though we were old friends, together after a long time apart; enjoyable, but cautious.

"Have you got another etiquette lesson this morning?"

"Yes."

"Abraxas and my mother have decided that we have had a long enough holiday. We must start making small appearances or people will start talking, and when people talk with no fuel, inevitably it gets out of hand. Tonight, we will attend a small, private dinner party with some of the family friends, just so people know you're still alive." He gave me a wry smile. "If we don't show you to some people – the _proper _people – rumors of your demise or other various scandals will be quite soon forthcoming."

"I understand. Won't there be questions as to the legitimacy of our marriage, as well? Does anyone other than your family know the real reason?" I hadn't really thought about how our marriage would look to the outside world. I had, naturally, been preoccupied. Everyone had known that I'd been in trouble, at least in Draco's circles.

"No," Draco said slowly, "But it's not hard to guess. You were in trouble, and I must have been blackmailed somehow into saving you. It's what everyone already thinks, and to be fair, isn't that far from the truth. So we have two options."

I nodded him on.

"Well," he said, holding up a finger, "We can either play along and tell the truth but make it especially clear that the deal is working out and we have become a happy couple, or," he held up a second finger, "we come up with a very believable story about how we fell in love and got ourselves married, possibly causing an even bigger scandal with a _willing _out-of-class wedding."

"Which are we more likely to survive intact?"

"Option number two."

"'Believable story'."

"Yes. And it's got to be damned good to fool the upper echelons of Pureblood society. It has to be _flawless_. Remember, these are the people who successfully escaped being convicted as war criminals. They know all about spotting a lie."

I thought for a moment. "Well, the first rule of writing a successful lie is to keep it as close to the truth as possible."

"Lied a lot, have you?" he asked amusedly, eyebrow raised.

"Yes, well… I tried to stay out of trouble, growing up with Harry and Ron, but in the end, I was usually forced into it by some extenuating circumstance. And clearly, I was the only one of the three of us with enough brains to keep our sparkling clean records intact."

"Don't know why I asked," he said dryly.

"Anyway," I cleared my throat. "Let's list the facts. One, we went to school together. But any witnesses would be entirely right in assuming there was nothing there to prelude a relationship not filled with utter loathing. Two, I was at your trial. Now, that _could _possibly be a spark that might have led you to notice me as more than a bigoted muggle-born, and I might have started seeing you in a brighter light once you were exonerated." His eyes darkened a small amount, but he nodded me on. "Three, we both worked at the ministry. Perhaps, after the initial change of feeling after the trial, working in relatively close quarters for a year might have led us into a friendship of sorts. Then, when I got into trouble with the deportation department, you, as my friend, were obviously honour-bound, and glad, to help me. And there you have it - a believable story."

"Good. It's close enough and vague enough that even close friends will believe it. Perfect."

"Yes, as a base, it will work. But things become tricky when we have to start coming up with smaller details. They're harder to remember, and since they are complete fabrications, it's easier to spot a fake. Also, since there's two of us, we can't have completely different stories for everything – for example, the engagement. Officially, when and how did that happen? The easiest way to circumvent little mistakes is to stay together throughout the whole evening. That way we can answer together."

"And meanwhile, we'll look like a closer couple."

"Exactly."

"Alright. Have Miss Blydon teach you the proper way to navigate a small dinner-party. It's not too complicated. It mostly has to do with knowing which cutlery to use and the proper titles. I'll give you a list of the guests, and you can memorize how to address each person."

"Okay."

"I'm going to the office today, so you'll be by yourself. I'll be back to pick you and my parents up at eight o'clock, so be ready by then. I'll leave something for you to wear on your bed."

"Right."

"I'll see you tonight, then." He stood from his chair and crossed around the table to mine, stooping to drop a chaste kiss on my cheek. His thumb and forefinger tilted my head up to receive it, and the pads of his fingers were warm against my skin. I blinked.

By the time I'd opened my eyes again a scant few seconds later, he was gone, the echo of his footsteps ringing back to me from the hall.

Sighing, I gathered myself for my lesson. I went back to my bedroom and put on a set of navy blue morning robes. They fell nicely around my ankles and the neckline was very pretty, with intricate beading and a layer of lace peeking out from underneath. I combed my hair with my fingers and tied it back into a tight plait from above my temples to the nape of my neck, where I folded the hair into a tight knot.

Miss Blydon arrived a second after I did, and I barely had time to press myself into a relaxed position in my favourite chair. She strolled in wearing a similar dress to mine, in frosty green with golden trim. Her eyes, still cold and unyielding, flicked over me in bare approval before resting on the chintz seat across from me. After she'd sat down, I waited for her greeting.

Upon receiving it, I stood and beckoned her to the table, where the elves had served a light luncheon. "I am to attend a dinner party tonight, and it is imperative that I learn quickly the proper order of things. My husband has also left a list of names for me to learn."

"Very well. The first thing you should know is that we eat from light to heavy. Salads and fruits first, then heavier vegetables, then meats last. Cutlery is from outside to inside. It isn't difficult." She said this quickly and with a clipped tone, but she didn't sound annoyed, which I decided was a good sign. "What you will no doubt have the most trouble with is eating properly, with decorum."

I practiced eating properly for the rest of the morning, and by the time the lesson was over, I'd eaten at least three plates of food and could barely breathe. I had never eaten so much in one sitting in my life.

But I was more confident than I had been before the lesson. I'd memorized the names of the guests, and I knew the titles. I could eat without spilling on myself or others, and I was able to masticate without unnecessary noises. All in all, I supposed this wouldn't be that difficult.

The difficulty would lie in not rising to the bait that would inevitably trap me in a sticky social situation.

At eight o'clock, I waited by the door for Draco to come get me. I was standing with Lucius and Narcissa, who I had not seen in the week I'd been living in their manor, and I was suffering under the heavy weight of their disapproval.

Lucius was staring at me as he always had, with undisguised loathing and a small amount of fear. The same sneer that had once smeared his son's face was pasted on his own, and his eyes, dark and empty, were creased with fury. He hated me with all the force of his nature, and I knew very well that I bore the brunt of his hatred for an entire group of magical society. In his eyes, I was singularly responsible, after Harry, for the downfall of his Lord, and the stripping of his own power. Never mind that I had saved his son.

Narcissa was harder to read. She hated me too, I was quite certain, but she hid it more easily than her husband. She stared at me as though I were a pig dressed in borrowed clothes. I was an affront to her very nature, partly because I looked the part of the Pureblood so well.

Draco had been true to his word, and he'd left me a set of lovely royal mauve robes in rich, heavy material I didn't recognize. My hair had received a good dose of Sleak-Easy Hair Potion and was twisted into a soft French twist at the back of my head. I was wearing a light dust of muggle foundation and a slick of mascara, and there were two amethyst stones set in silver at my ears.

If I didn't feel so uncomfortable, I might have been from a family as rich as the Malfoys.

Draco burst through the flames of the fireplace a second later, and he sent an approving nod in my direction before landing a kiss on his mother's cheek.

"Father, you and mother can go now. I'll bring Hermione momentarily."

Lucius took Narcissa's elbow and led her into the fireplace, where they disappeared with a pop of smoke and ash. Draco turned to me and pulled something from his pocket.

"I have something for you," he said. He flicked open a small black box and held out a spectacular ring, long and flat with three beautiful, polished emeralds set in a row like beads resting on a silver band. He took my hand and removed my wedding band. "This ring is for home," he said, indicating the plain, though still obviously expensive wedding band I had worn thus far. "This one is for show."

He pushed the emerald ring onto my ring finger, where it glittered like green fire. "This was my grandmother's on my father's side, Abraxas's wife. It's been in the family since 1097."

"It's beautiful," I said. I'd never had much of an appreciation for ostentatious jewellery, but this was, I had to admit, incredibly gorgeous. "Thank you."

"Just try not to show my mother. It's passed from generation to generation, and it was hers until last week. She gave it to me gracefully, but I think she rather liked it and she was quite put out to see it go."

"I won't rub it in, I promise."

"Just not to my mother. But you can show it off to everyone else as often as you'd like." He grinned at me. "Malfoy's are all about the show."

"Yes, I'm beginning to learn that."

"I knew you were a quick learner." He took my other ring and slid it inside the box before calling for a House Elf to return it to my jewellery drawer. "Let's go."

.

.

The Hamiltons were not one of the Big Five, but they were rich enough and smart enough that it hardly mattered. They were in some way connected through marriage or blood to nearly every one of the main Pureblood families, and if the list of the higher-ups continued past five, they would probably have been number six. Their bloodlines were, perhaps, not quite as long and old, and their name lacked a certain air of reverence, but their pocketbooks were deep and their bearing was as regal as the best of them.

Lady Lucretia Hamilton was a curvy, short woman with dark, long straight hair and dark brown eyes with a hint of subtle Spanish influence. She was related through marriage to the Zabini's, who, while also not of the Big Five, were incredibly powerful in the business world and so were still an incredibly influential connection.

Lord Gilles Hamilton was a tall man just past his prime, his body retaining past fitness but beginning to show a bulge around the middle. His eyes were keenly aware of everything that went on in his home, and I instantly got the sense that he was dangerous, but probably not to me. He appeared to be a relaxed host, more willing to watch events unfold rather than usher them along, very unlike his incredibly interfering and controlling wife, who, from the instant we passed through her fireplace, was peppering us with questions and directing our actions with the subtlety of a loud, yipping dog.

"Oh, Narcissa dear, how wonderful to see you! I'm so pleased you could come. And Lucius, darling, I know Gilles is delighted to have you, and Draco, of course!" She glanced over and made a small show out of noticing me for the first time while her husband hung back a ways, watching me. "The new Lady Malfoy! You must tell me all about your wedding over dinner, I hear it was quite romantic. And your engagement, of course, I've heard was quite the story!"

"Yes, I suppose it was," I said. "I'd be happy to tell you all about it."

"Lovely, lovely," Lucretia said, flashing her red lips into a smile. "Now Narcissa, you simply must tell me where you got your robes." She turned to Narcissa and led her into the dining hall, where the men each received a tumbler of amber liquid and the ladies were handed a glass of tame, watered down wine. I wanted whatever it was the men had.

I stood with Narcissa and Lucretia for what seemed like an eternity, chatting about clothes and fashions I'd never heard of, rarely called upon to submit an opinion unless it was by Lucretia, who was irritatingly interested in everything I had to say.

Gilles and Lucius were deep in discussion a few feet away, taking periodic gulps from their tumblers. Draco was standing with them, facing me, and he didn't seem to be speaking much, but he looked serious. I could hear occasional swatches of their conversation, and it sounded much more interesting than my own.

"- the Squib movements..."

"…Villeneauve can't control his own…"

"… ever since his son died…"

"Ah, there you are!" Lucretia suddenly exclaimed in my ear. I turned around to see Abraxas come in. "So good to see you, Uncle!"

Abraxas smiled slightly. "My dear, I am glad you are well."

"Very well!" Lucretia went over and kissed his cheek. "I began to worry if you would come after all."

"I wouldn't miss it."

"Well, you're here now. Let's sit. Here, have a brandy."

"Thank you," he said.

We moved to our chairs, and as I started to sit down, I felt the chair push in behind me. It was Gilles, and he sat down next to me once I was seated. Draco sat on my other side. I leaned towards him and whispered, "Abraxas is her uncle?"

"Through marriage. My Grandmother was Lucretia's mother's sister."

"So she isn't related to the Malfoys?"

"Not through blood, but she tends to forget when she cites her family tree," he whispered quietly.

"Oh, I see," I whispered back.

"How nice to see a pair of newlyweds so close," said Lucretia as though she knew we were talking about her. "Such a rare thing, these days." She raised a glass. "I propose a toast, to their happiness. If you would do the honours, Narcissa?"

"Of course," Narcissa said in her quiet, feminine voice. " 'May the Gods bless you with long life; may your riches never run dry; may your health never fail; may you bear desirable children; and may your bloodlines run forever strong'."

" 'May you be given desirable children?' " I asked.

"Well of course, Lady Malfoy. We pray you not be cursed with damned, ruined stock – Merlin forbid you should birth a Squib. My goodness."

"I – I –" I took a deep breath. Nothing would be achieved if I let my anger surface. "I thank you for your kind words, Lady Hamilton. I am honoured by your generosity."

I felt the nudge of Draco's foot under the table, and saw him nod nearly imperceptibly out of the corner of my eye.

"So, Lady Malfoy," Lucretia began, and I looked towards her. "When did you and Lord Malfoy meet?"

"We met in school," I said. "We were in the same year."

"And the same house?"

"No, he was Slytherin." I glanced at him. "I was a Gryffindor." Which she should have known, really. My name and credentials had been plastered across newspapers and front pages for a solid year after the Final Battle.

"A Gryffindor! Really! How... interesting." She took a sip from her glass and set it down with a small 'clink' before clearing her throat and looking at me. "Your parents must be very proud of you. They are not Pureblood, are they?"

"Proud for what?"

"For making such an advantageous marriage, of course."

"My parents would have been happy whoever I'd married," I said frostily.

"Naturally, they cannot quite understand the gravity of our world."

"On the contrary, they understand perfectly. They know the dangers. I've explained everything to them." I added, in a subtle dig: "After all, the politics of Wizarding society are not so very different from muggle society. They noticed the similarities quite quickly."

Instantly, Lady Hamilton, along with both of Draco's parents, stiffened in their seats. Lady Hamilton gasped and raised a hand to her chest. "What do you mean? They are _vastly _different!"

"Not really. There are social classes, an Aristocracy, a ruling power, the middle classes, and the lower, looked-down on classes at the bottom. The struggle for survival is the same, with magic or without."

"Magical society is not so medieval! We do not have a 'looked-down-upon' class as you say," she insisted, and I wondered what planet she had been living on.

"Sure you do. Muggleborns, Werewolves, magical creatures. You yourself are a member of the upper class, and if there is an upper class, then by definition a lower class exists as well."

"But, my dear, that isn't a class. That's just the way it is! Muggleborns and Werewolves are what they are! I hesitate to say that they are _lower_…"

"And yet they don't have equal rights. Muggleborns, at least, can find work, but even then, prejudice is everywhere. Werewolves are not even considered citizens –"

"Because they aren't!"

I fought to control my temper. "Lady Hamilton, I'm not sure if you're aware… but _I _am a Muggleborn. A very close friend of mine was a Werewolf."

"Yes, dear, we know," she dismissed with the wave of her hand. "Everyone knows. Your marriage is a scandal of the highest order. I don't know if you've seen the papers, but…" She cleared her throat again delicately.

"I haven't."

"You should take a peek. Just to see."

"I'll be sure to do so," I lied.

"Yes, good, good. If you are so convinced that our society is filled with classes, perhaps it might be good for you to learn a bit about them."

The rest of the dinner went much the same. Lucretia would cast subtle, and some not-so-subtle, insults my way, and I was left to parry them as best I could without embarrassing myself. I managed, mostly, to control my temper, and I returned a few of the insults with veiled insults of my own, some apparently so veiled that Lucretia didn't even notice them.

.

.

After midnight, Draco helped me gather my heavy cloak and wrapped it around my shoulders. I took his arm and clung to it as he Apparated us to the Manor from the front steps of the Hamilton House. He walked me back to my bedroom and hung my cloak in the closet for me as I shimmied out of my gown and replaced it with my robe. He sent the cloak for cleaning and I asked him a question that had been niggling the back of my mind for the whole evening.

"Draco, before you go… Who is Villeneauve?"

"Eavesdropping?" he raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't really intend to… but your conversation sounded so much more interesting than mine."

He pulled up a chair from my small writing desk and sat down near my bed.

"What do you know of the Villeneauves?"

"Not much. I've seen the family tree and I know they're very old, but I've never met any."

"You wouldn't have," Draco said. "There's only one Villeneauve left, and he very rarely comes out in public. But you've probably seen a photograph. Segovax periodically makes the newspapers for one reason or another. He was at my trial, as well."

"Is he a recluse?"

"More or less. Segovax was the head of his family and married a young Frenchwoman – she was barely graduated – when he was in his twenties. They had a single child, Sebastian, and Segovax raised him to be the next head. Sebastian attended Hogwarts and was an excellent student, and didn't make much of a name for himself until his death. He became a Death Eater at seventeen, and he was killed in the first skirmish between Death Eaters and Aurors. Sebastian was the first casualty from among the Death Eaters, and his death marked a sort of upheaval. After he died, the war became much more vicious and violent - the Death Eaters wanted revenge, and the Aurors wanted to keep control of the Death Eaters."

"So Segovax's only son and heir was killed. Did he have more children?"

"No. Five years after Sebastian's death, Segovax's wife turned up dead. Segovax remarried, and then his second wife turned up dead too. He married three more times, each marriage ending in death for the wife. There's never been any proof that he's killed anyone, but it seems obvious what's happening."

"He's killing them," I said, nodding. "Because they can't bear children?"

"It seems likely. Pureblood culture is about the maintaining and perpetuating of bloodlines. Segovax is the last of a very old, very historically important family. If he doesn't have a son, the Villeneauve line will die with him."

"How old is he?"

"Somewhere in his sixties."

"So he's running out of time."

"Slowly, but yes." He nodded and stood. "I have a meeting in the morning, so I'm going to bed. Goodnight, Hermione. You did well, tonight."

"Thank you," I said. "I'll see you later."

He returned the chair to the writing desk slid it under the table. As he turned, a piece of parchment fluttered to the ground. It was a letter. "You've knocked something off the desk," I said when he didn't notice.

Draco picked it up and read the name. "It's for you," he said. He walked it over to me.

My name was printed in block letters, in thick, black ink.

"I didn't even notice it." I slid my thumb through the crease and prised the letter open. The contents were in the same bold, all capitalized font.

.

**HERMIONE GRANGER;**

'**AND THEREFORE THINK HIM AS A SERPENT'S EGG,**

**WHICH, HATCH'D, WOULD AS HIS KIND GROW MISCHEVIEOUS,**

**AND KILL HIM IN THE SHELL.'**

_**TREAD SOFTLY, FOR YOU WILL DROWN**_

**_._**

"What is it?" Draco asked.

I handed him the letter. "It's a death threat."

.

.

A/N: I am so, so sorry that it's taken me this long to update! Truly, I apologize on bended knee, and shall continue to do so until you all forgive me!

But, however long it took, here it is. I hope the lengthy anticipation did not turn into high-expectations which I've no doubt failed to meet.

Also, note: In Chapter One, during Hermione's flashback, she cites the end of the war being a year before the time of the wedding: It should be about three. I'm in the process of changing that on all the sites I've posted, but it could take a while. Just so you know, because if it were only a year, Hermione would be nineteen, which is a bit young for her to have landed in so much trouble. So, for the record, Hermione is twenty-two, and Draco is about twenty-one, very nearly twenty-two.

Thanks so much, please review! It's going to start getting juicy now, so don't abandon me yet!

Alex.


	8. Secrets

**Blood and Connection**

**Chapter Eight**

_I walk through the Atrium, keenly aware that I am being watched._

_The elevator announces its arrival with a chime, before the doors spring open to reveal Lucius Malfoy, conversing with a tall, pasty man with sandy brown hair and nondescript features. I need to get on the lift, and I make my way there._

_At the sight of me, both men shut their mouths sharply. I want to know what they were talking about. The sandy-haired man nudges Lucius and mutters his goodbye. I reach the doors and am pushed bodily out of the way with a well placed elbow. Lucius Malfoy shoves me aside, and I, not expecting such tactics, fly into the floor._

"_It's where you belong, Mudblood," Lucius hisses as he walks away._

_I pull myself to my feet. No one helps me. People stand, stare, whisper… but never help. I enter the lift, and when I turn to look back into the Atrium, I see a hundred blank, expressionless faces looking back at me._

_Funny how one can go from being the War Heroine to the Social Outcast in the space of a few days. Funny how such an aristocratic, high-born 'gentleman' as Malfoy can be so base and low. Funny how such a man is to be my father-in-law. I wonder, as the doors close, if he's yet heard the news that I am to join his family._

_._

_._

_.  
_

'_AND THEREFORE THINK HIM AS A SERPENT'S EGG,_

_WHICH, HATCH'D, WOULD AS HIS KIND GROW MISCHEVIEOUS,_

_AND KILL HIM IN THE SHELL.'_

_TREAD SOFTLY, FOR YOU WILL DROWN_

"A death threat? You aren't serious…"

"Read it. It's… its there."

"You're sure?" he asked me, his brows furrowed as he read through the short lines.

"I'm sure," I breathed. I wondered why I wasn't more panicked. I should have been frightened. Terrified, maybe. But I wasn't; I was inexplicably calm.

"What is this? I don't recognize this quote."

"It's Shakespeare, a muggle poet from a few hundred years ago. It's very popular even now, and it wouldn't be that hard to find the reference."

"What does it mean?" He looked at me, very white.

"The 'serpents' egg' is referring to me. Essentially it means that, so far, I am a mild problem. And they are going to kill me to prevent me from growing into a bigger problem."

"Maybe it's just a warning," Draco insisted. "What if you're making it out to be more serious than it is?"

"It _is _a warning, of sorts," I said. "Whoever sent it wants me to shut up and quit while I'm still a small enough problem that they can let me live. 'Tread softly' suggests that they're giving me a chance to toe the line, but 'or you will drown' means they're serious."

"Do you think its from the same people who kidnapped you? It must be…"

"I don't know. I have lots of enemies. It could be half the Wizarding population. But yes, I think you're right."

"Did you _have _to go and paint such a big target on the back of your head during the war?" Draco snapped.

"Everyone had a target," I said, smiling. "Mine was just a bit longer-lasting."

"Pity," he said. He returned the note to my hands. Why had they used Shakespeare? I was never going to be able to read it the same way again, I thought. "We need to test it for magical residue and signatures. If this is serious, you're going to need protection," he told me seriously.

I was suddenly very annoyed. "I'm not going to go around with a bodyguard. I'm perfectly capable of handling myself." I had survived the entire war without one, and I wasn't going to get one now, just because someone had decided to voice what everyone was thinking.

"How do we know it's only one man? What if it's a group? What if they're stalking you? Hermione, this is serious. We don't even know – how did they get in here? Is the door open?" He went abruptly to my balcony door and tried to open it, but it was locked shut. "They got past the wards, somehow."

"Did you _feel_ anything?" I asked, wondering why I wasn't more concerned.

"I wasn't home – the resonation of a ward going off is only really powerful when you're close, or at home. We were too far away for me to have noticed much of anything…"

"Would a House Elf have noticed something?"

"They would have brought it to my attention immediately…" He snapped his fingers anyway and called the head House Elf. "Was anyone in Hermione's room today? Anyone at all, apart from her?" he asked the Elf seriously.

"No, sir - no one at all."

"Was anyone in this Wing of the Manor at all? Did you see anyone strange?"

"No, sir - no one. The only one who's been in the wing today besides you and Miss Hermione was Master Lucius in the Library."

"Ok. Thank you, you can go. But – if you or any of the other Elves see or hear anything suspicious from now on, you are to tell myself or Hermione immediately, understood?"

"Yes, sir. We will, sir." The House Elf bowed so low that its nose nearly touched the floor before disappearing with a pop.

"He was very eloquent, for a House Elf," I said with surprise. Most Elves had a tendency to sound not unlike stereotypical African-American slaves from the nineteenth century.

"'She', actually. Minky was my grandmother's elf for years, and my grandmother couldn't tolerate bad English, so all of her personal Elves were educated." He rubbed the bridge of his nose with long fingers. "We need to show that note to Abraxas. Come on," he said. He held out a hand to me and helped me off the bed, and we walked together to Abraxas' study in the South Wing. Abraxas held nearly all of the South Wing at his disposal, and when he lived in the Manor, usually for the summer, he took residence there and banished all other living things from the whole of it for however long he stayed. He said that he despised being interrupted, and ordinarily, Draco wouldn't dream of venturing there for anything, but this was important, and Abraxas had to be told.

When Draco and I pulled closer to the slightly ajar door of Abraxas's personal office, we heard raised voices. Abraxas was arguing with his son, loudly, and one or the other of the two of them was banging a table or some other surface with a fist or foot.

"…you bring disgrace upon the family, Lucius… you always have! This is just one more incident – soon its going to be one incident too many, and then I won't be able to bail you out…"

"You're one to talk, _Father_ – you've never done _anything_ for this family… _nothing_!" Lucius spat.

"Nothing? _Nothing_! If I've done nothing, then you've gone and regressed! When I gave you my title, the Malfoy name commanded respect! You've done everything you could to ruin it!" Abraxas' tone was cold and furious.

"I have raised this family to the heights it's never been before!"

"No, you've driven her into the ground, Lucius! And you seek to drive her further. Your alliance with Vil-" Abraxas was cut off.

"-There _is no alliance_!" Lucius roared. "There never has been. That 'alliance' is no more than the fanciful imaginings of a disturbed old mind!"

"If there is no alliance, then why have you been corresponding so heavily the past few years? Ever since your pardon, you've been after him like a stray dog," Abraxas demanded icily.

"…You only seek to –"

Draco knocked on the door before Lucius could reply. Draco pushed the door open wider, and I could see both men, furious and stony faced, spring instantly to face the door.

"Draco, this isn't a good time…" Abraxas said in a distracted way, but Draco walked in anyway, tugging me along beside him.

"Sorry, Grandfather, but this is urgent. Hermione's been sent a death threat."

Abraxas paled, and Lucius stared incredulously. I held out the letter and handed it to Abraxas, who took it and read it swiftly.

"Who?" Abraxas asked quietly.

"No name," Draco said. "They left it on Hermione's desk. Don't know how, either. They had to have come past the wards."

"It's not very specific…" Abraxas said, rereading the lines.

"It's not meant to be," I said. "I haven't done anything specific yet. They're warning me away from digging further into anything. So far, I've barely scratched the surface."

"Surface of what?" Lucius sneered.

"Blood research," Draco said absently, moving to confer with Abraxas.

"Blood research?" Lucius demanded incredulously.

I shrugged, determined not to let Lucius get to me. "I'd like to determine the origination of magic, and if it's connected with Blood or genetics."

"Blood," he repeated, his eyes unfocused. Suddenly, he whirled on Abraxas. "You dare – you _dare _accuse me of ruining this family, and yet you bring this… this _whore _into my house, where she can spread her filthy lies!" He screamed.

"Get out!" Abraxas finally exploded, losing his temper. His voice was so loud it hurt my ears, and I had never seen him look angrier. His face was violently tense and red and there was a vein pulsing on his forehead. "Get out of my office right now, before I throw you out."

"This is my house!" Lucius roared. "_This is my house_!" Suddenly he quieted and pierced me with a dangerous stare as he continued speaking to his father. "She's got you right where she wants you, doesn't she," Lucius hissed. "Right where she can blindside you and ruin you, and you won't even know until it's done. You'll regret this, mark my words. You'll regret the day you let a _Mudblood _taint the Malfoy line!"

I tried not to feel ill while he hissed such dreadful things about me, but it was hard. As he brushed past me to storm out of the office, slamming the door behind him, I wondered what it would have been like to marry into a family that actually liked me.

"I'm sorry, Hermione. You shouldn't have had to listen to that," Draco said quietly.

"It's alright. I'd rather know what people think."

"That's the wrong thing to say, Hermione. 'People' do not think that about you. _Lucius _thinks that about you. Lucius is disturbed in his mind, and he always has been. Don't let him drag you down. Don't think on it," Abraxas said, coming to stand by me. He patted my arm gently and ushered me over to sit in a soft chair near the fireplace. I knew better than to believe him that only Lucius thought what he did about me, but I didn't say anything.

"Come, we need to discuss this," he said firmly.

.

.

.

The next morning, when the sun was still a few hours from being fully arisen, I changed into my other form for the first time in a week and slunk out the door. The cool air beckoned me, and I followed the faint line of shadow cast by the house until I reached the edge of the trees, where I loped off down the path, enjoying the feel of the wind against my face.

I padded down the path until I reached the soft sand of the creek where I had come with Draco before. It was secluded and quiet and I lay down in a patch of sand where the sun was just beginning to show itself. I lay there for over an hour, thinking about everything.

In the sunlight, my coat was not quite as black. I could see the faint tracery of a patchwork of true black spots and an undercoat that was simply a very dark chocolate brown. If I looked at my reflection in the water, I could see lighter flecks of golden brown around my eyes. I was a panther, but I was also a Jaguar, and in the sun, I could see it.

But I was thankful for my dark, camouflaged colors very quickly. Someone was coming down the trail on horseback, hooves clopping in the heavy gravel. I wasn't in the mood to be seen, so I quickly leapt into a tree and climbed my way to a branch high enough to be out of the way.

The horse, unlike the rider, noticed my presence almost immediately. It began to shy and prance frightfully on the spot, kicking up dirt and rocks as the rider attempted to control it. I couldn't tell who the rider was. They were cloaked, even though it was a warm morning, and their face was covered. Eventually, the horse, though unhappy, settled enough to walk skittishly beneath me, quickening its pace as soon as it was past. I heard muted male tones, and from the slight glint of blond peeking from beneath the hood, I surmised that it was Lucius. Draco was working, and Abraxas no longer rode.

I followed him.

I kept to the shadows, skirting behind, watching, padding silently through the trees and underbrush. The horse did not forget my presence and fought with Lucius the entire time, and he resorted to using a tight, iron grip, sawing heavily on the reins, and kicking every few feet. I wished I could convey to the poor animal that I was merely curious, but I couldn't do so without making my presence known. I decided that later, maybe, I would visit the stables in my Jaguar form and apologize.

He stayed on the path until just before the lake, where he turned right into the forest, onto a small path that was well hidden from the main road. It led around the lake and up to the cliffs, opening into a small clearing just where the trees thinned before reaching the edge of the sheer rock. There were hundreds of birds' nests in the trees, and as soon as Lucius reached the clearing, the sound of his horse and his grunted noises of frustration sent the lot of the birds into the air in a flurry of wings and feathers and cries of annoyance, blackening the sky with their sheer numbers.

I moved around the clearing and hid myself under a pine tree with thick, sweeping branches that covered the ground, leaving just enough room for me to crouch down and watch.

Lucius paced, waiting so long that the birds got over their fear and returned to their nests. By the time they did, the sun had moved higher into the sky already.

I heard the guest long before Lucius did. From the other side of the clearing, heavy boots crunched and stomped through the forest until another cloaked figure stumbled his way into the clearing, dark and swearing viciously.

"We couldn't meet _anywhere _else, Malfoy?"

"I've told you, my movements are watched. I can't leave my property without some nosy ministry rat knowing about it."

"Pity," said the second figure, but he didn't sound very sorry at all. He pulled a small something from a deep pocket and handed it to Lucius, who tucked it in his sleeve. "It was delivered, then?"

"Yes," Lucius said.

"And?"

"No one suspected. You're clear."

"Good. I'm counting on you, Malfoy," the figure said warningly. Lucius snarled.

"You'd better keep your word," Lucius snapped. "If I find so much as a whisper of the brat, I'll know exactly where to look."

"There won't be anything to concern yourself with," the figure said. "I have as much to lose as you do, remember?"

"Fine. Just keep in mind, I know your secrets…" Lucius laughed coldly like a crazed man before issuing a command. "Now get off my property before someone knows you're here. My bastard son might feel the wards."

"I'm going. See that it's delivered properly, Malfoy…"

"Get out," Lucius said. He turned and vaulted back onto his horse, adjusting his feet in the stirrups for a split second before turning and galloping back into the forest the way he had come.

The second figure looked after Lucius from under his hood until the sounds of the horse's hooves faded away behind the steep walls of rock, before whirling around and Apparating away on the spot.

I waited five minutes and crossed through the forest and back to the Manor, whipping past trees and branches until I had overtaken Lucius, who was confined to his meandering path, and I beat him home.

.

.

.

I hurried to my bedroom and changed quickly, pulled my clothes on, entered my lab and pulled down a potion that was under stasis, quickly heating it and stirring it into wakefulness. I was gasping for air and flushed from running, and I had to concentrate for a good ten minutes to get my breathing and heart rate under control. When Draco walked in a half hour after I'd come back, I appeared as though I had been in the lab the whole time, and he didn't suspect that I had gone out at all.

Should I have told him? Said something about his father's scheming? I wanted to, but I didn't know anything, save for the fact that Lucius was up to something. It wasn't enough information to haul out the Aurors for. So I kept silent, and pretended not to have heard anything at all.

"Good Morning, Hermione," Draco said upon entering. He held a small plate of toast in his hands and he set it beside me before sitting on a nearby stool. "What are you working on this morning?"

What _was_ I doing? I glanced down quickly to make sure. "I'm breaking down the components of blood into their molecular components," I said quickly.

"What will that do?"

"It'll show me how magical blood is formatted." I pointed to the wall, where I had stuck a blown-up poster of the DNA chain found in muggle blood. "That is a genetic map, found in muggle blood. It's found in every cell in your body, and it's a sort of instruction manual."

"And we have those too?"

I was nearly inexplicably proud of him for using the word 'we', signifying that he, at long last, was accepting that he and I were the same. I smiled. "Yes, we do. They are why you have blond hair and I have brown, why yours is fine and straight and why mine is thick and bushy, why you have grey eyes and why I have brown."

"Okay. So if Muggles have already found this chain, why do you need to find it too?"

"Because Muggles don't have magic, but we do, and I don't know why. If I can find a 'magic gene', or something similar, I can prove that magic is genetic and passed from generation to generation."

Draco looked confused. He was very intelligent, but he was not scientific, and I was using too many new words for him to follow very quickly. "But we already know that magic is passed through generations."

"Yes, but Wizards only know about half of it. 'Pureblood' and 'Half-Blood' are terms that suggest we know magic is genetic, but with a term like 'Mudblood', I don't really think we do. Genes don't just pop up out of nowhere. Even if magic is genetic, Muggleborns don't just sporadically develop a gene that says they have magic. It has to come from somewhere. I have a few theories, but I won't know for sure until I can compare some strands. I think it might have something to do with the parents of Muggleborns being 'carriers' of the magic gene." I noticed his blank stare. "It means they have the same gene, but it's either recessive or just 'turned off', so to speak, so they don't have magic themselves, but they can pass it to their children."

"Recessive?"

"Genes can be dominant or recessive. It's the combinations of recessive and dominant parent genes in different ways that decide the offspring genes. For example," I said, and I pulled a piece of paper and a pen towards me, "blonde hair and brown hair. Blonde hair is recessive, and brown is dominant. A child with blonde hair has to have a parent or ancestor with blonde hair to be blonde. A child of two brown haired parents will not be born with blonde hair, unless both brown haired parents are carriers of the recessive blonde gene."

I wrote down 'b' for blonde, and 'C' for brown and drew an example Punnet Square.

"This is called a Punnet Square. The square at the bottom represents the blonde child. So, see, the parents have a twenty-five percent chance of having a blonde child, and a seventy-five percent chance of having a brunette child. The genetics of the magic gene in its basest form might look like this, but it would also be much, much more complicated. I can't really make a chart for it until I know how magic is transferred, because with magic, apparently, if the current theories are correct, it _can_ just spring up from nowhere, so the genes aren't passed genetically. And I'm not sure what the rates are for Squibs and magical births to Pureblood and Half-Blood families, so I won't be sure if the results of a Punnet Square would be even remotely correct… it would appear to be somewhere between a 25:75 ratio, but I've _never_ heard of that many Squibs being born."

Draco looked considerably impressed. "I had no idea it would be so complicated," he said after a moment. "No wonder the Purebloods were so upset with you, they probably couldn't understand a word of what you were saying."

"Exactly," I said, heavily annoyed all over again. "They wouldn't sit still long enough to listen to me. They just wanted me gone, because they were afraid of my results. But even if my results _are_ radical, it won't change much but the idea that Muggleborns somehow 'steal magic'".

"People don't like change," he said.

"People are irrational," I told him.

"And scared," he added.

"I don't see why," I said, but I could see his point. People through history had always been afraid of change, and I wasn't too hopeful that Wizards would be any different.

"They'll get over it," he assured me.

"I hope so." I remembered something I'd wanted to ask the night before. "By the way… Would it be alright for me to invite Harry and Ginny for a visit?" I still wasn't ready to see Ron, but I missed having a friend.

His eyes darkened at Harry's name and his jaw clenched a bit, but, stoically, he didn't say anything derogatory. "You live here too," he said, "you can invite whoever you want." He swallowed. "As long as I don't have to be there."

I laughed. "You don't have to come," I said. "I just wanted to ask you first."

"Don't worry about it," he said. "When are you thinking about inviting them," he asked, "so I can make… arrangements."

"Tomorrow?"

"Fine with me," he said brightly. "I'll be at work!"

.

.

.

_Dear Harry and Ginny;_

_Don't worry, I'm alive and well. In fact, I was wondering if the two of you might be interested in coming for a visit tomorrow; say around ten o'clock in the morning? We could have brunch, whatever you'd like… I miss both of you, so please, please say you'll come!_

_I've settled in pretty well, it isn't so bad being here. Draco's signed me up for etiquette lessons at my request, so I'm learning how to be a proper Pureblood wife who doesn't offend anyone and everyone. (I figured it would be handy for later, but I'll tell you everything in person!) I went to my first dinner party last night and I think I did alright; it was at the Hamiltons, that old family in business with everyone with money. Lady Hamilton mentioned that I should read the papers, as apparently I've missed quite a bit, but I let my subscription lapse right after the Battle of Hogwarts, so I was wondering if you might bring me some copies if you haven't thrown them out. I'm curious, I have to say. I wouldn't care, but she hinted quite heavily that the articles weren't pretty… and I'd rather know before going to another party what people are saying. _

_I'm getting along with Draco quite well, better than I'd hoped. He isn't much like he was in school. His grandfather, Abraxas, is also quite surprising. I was expecting someone much more like Lucius, but he's very… different. Like how I thought the Aristocracy was supposed to be – stuffy and reserved, but polite and respectful. I like him._

_I haven't seen Lucius or Narcissa much._

_Anyway, I'm running out of parchment. Please come tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, give me a date that works for you! I'm completely at your leisure!_

_I miss you both very much and look forward to seeing you,_

_Lots of love,_

_Hermione._


End file.
